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MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 



MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 



By 
HERSELF 



ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 



INDIANAPOLIS 

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



Copyright 1918 
The Bobbs-Merrill Company 



TO* 



PRC99 OF 

BRAUNWORTH & CO. 

BOOK MANUFACTURCRa 

BROOKLYN. N. Y. 



DEC -9 1918 






CI.A508468 



DEDICATION 

Were I not in America, were this book meeting 
the light of the public eye under the shelter of the 
Crosses of United Freedom rather than the Stars and 
Stripes of United Liberty, I would dedicate its pages 
to the wounded soldier who is my husband, my helper, 
my confidant — the man who is always and ever "mon 
pal." But him I will ask this once to step aside for 
others. 

In sincere love and admiration I dedicate this book, 
humble though the offering be, to the great-hearted 
daughters of a great-souled nation 

THE WOMEN" OF AMEBICA. 
May God Bless and Keep Youe Loved Ones. 

May God Almighty be in you and with you as He 
has been with us of Britain in the hours of sorrow, 
the days of gladness and the years of pride. 

Louisa Watson Peat. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I War and Women . 1 

II Men Must Fight 9 

III Women in Wab — Waiting 15 

IV The Sunday in September . . . • 20 
V National Service for Women .... 27 

VI Soldiers in the Home 32 

VII Women — Enduring 43 

VIII Peter and the Canadians 50 

IX The First War Christmas 59 

X The Invisible Income 65 

XI Spies 76 

XII War Brides 91 

XIII Peter Goes West 101 

XIV Preachings and Practise Ill 

XV The Hun As He Is 119 

XVI In on the Ground Floor 130 

XVII Women— Digging 139 

XVIII Zeppelin Nights 150 

XIX Some of the Boys 164 

XX Silhouettes of War 171 

XXI The Second Line of Defence .... 182 

XXII The Second Line of Defence . . . . 197 

XXIII Financial Independence and Afterward 208 

XXIV Daughters of Columbia 218 

XXV The Future of the Nations .... 225 

XXVI Private Harold R. Peat ..... 236 

A Page of Hints 237 



MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 



MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

CHAPTER I 

WAR AND WOMEN 

THE first words of this book are being 
written as I stay quietly in a fifth floor 
room of a Chicago hospital. Just in the curve 
of my arm, hindering the progress of the pen- 
cil, yet watching the movement of it with a 
calculating eye, is my three-days-old daughter. 
And I write of war. 

Every time I have spoken to the great Amer- 
ican public I have told how every soldier man 
when he reaches the fighting front fights for 
some woman. He says, "Mother." I look at 
my baby and I say once more — "Every baby 
girl is a potential mother and that word covers 
the universe of women." Our men-folk to-day 
are fighting, bleeding, dying for us. It is war 

1 



2 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

and women, it is war for women's sake, it 
is war for the safety of womanhood. 

But to-day it is 1918. This day four years 
ago — 1914 — I had no thought of a great war, 
of marching armed men, of wounded, of hos- 
pitals, of love, of marriage, of babies. It is 
all the outcome of war. Can we doubt — "and 
out of evil there shall come that which is 
good"? 

May, 1914, saw us 'way back in the old 
country busy with what only amounted to 
petty doings after all. There was the rumor 
of risings in Ireland. I had been over in April, 
part of March and a week or two of May. I 
had seen the volunteer armies of Ulster, 
equipped to fight, if need be, for their ideal — to 
stay with the British Empire. Some of my own 
people were in it. Tom Small, my stepbrother, 
was an active member. Ena, his sister, was 
almost qualified in the Red Cross hospital of 
her district. I had been to my old home town 
and had seen Miss Annie MacKean organis- 
ing, directing and supervising once again as 
she had done at previous Fenian risings and 
Home Rule scares. This time things were more 



WAR AND WOMEN 3 

serious for there were rumors of the insidious 
influence and more powerful money influence 
of an alien power working among the party 
opposed to England. 

June passed, then July. The British King 
and government were entertaining the Kaiser's 
brother. His reception was only a little less 
magnificent than had been that of the Kaiser 
himself a year or two before. I remember 
at that time joining the crowd at Queen Vic- 
toria Street one noon when his Germanic Ma- 
jesty went in state to lunch at the Guildhall. 
How condescendingly proud he looked and how 
we simple Britishers cheered and welcomed 
him madly. Our soldiers guarded him, our 
flags waved over him, our populace rent heaven 
with a greeting and he bowed from right to 
left, I suppose in his inward soul saying, "The 
fools — soon I shall crush them — soon they will 
be mine." And still we cheered, banquetted 
and feted. 

In July of 1914, while His Royal Highness 
still wandered at will through factories, work- 
shops and dockyards — I remember it was the 
last Saturday in July that he visited the match 



4 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

factory of Bryant and May in East London — 
there came two events, the arrangement of a 
great British Naval Review at Portsmouth, 
which King George was to attend, and the trag- 
edy of Sarajevo. It was not till war was afoot 
on the continent and we were still hung in the 
balance or sitting on the fence for the most 
miserable three days of our lives, that we took 
note of the minor happenings of June and July. 
We knew a German woman, — as a matter of 
fact we knew several and liked none, but this 
particular one was somewhat different. She 
had been born British in the Mauritius and at 
seven years was adopted by a German spinster 
woman who eventually left a fortune to the 
girl. She married a German — I shall call her 
Schmidt, her name was equally ordinary — she 
spoke German, wrote German, thought German, 
was German. She came in late May or early 
June to visit her English sister who lived in 
the house to the right of our own. There came 
with her her daughter, Sacha, brought with the 
ostensible purpose of being placed in a boarding 
school to learn English. Her eldest son was an 
officer in the German forces, her husband, a 



WAR AND WOMEN 5 

man of considerable wealth, had estates and 
sugar beet farms in South Germany. 

Stupid as we were, we did not notice the 
trend of her questions when apparently with 
only ordinary interest she asked about the state 
of Ireland. Always her conversation led to that 
situation. We had and really have no reason 
to believe that she was interested for any ulte- 
rior motive, but things of this sort struck 
us as peculiar the moment war came. She 
began shortly asking me about restaurants at 
which it would be interesting to lunch or dine. 
Being out in the world, fending for myself, I 
had had meals in most of the respectable and 
reputable dining places of the city. 

It was at the Metropole in Brighton that she 
spoke to the German waiter in her South Ger- 
man tongue: "You'll be coming over to help 
us one day," said she. 

"I am British," he answered, "these many 
years. My two sons are in the Territorials." 

I can yet see her angry, incredulous stare: 
"How is it," she exclaimed, "that men of other 
countries become British, but never British be- 
come German or other nation?" 



6 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

Surely a question she has had answered since 
1914. Once born English speaking, always 
English speaking and proud of the heritage. 

In the second week of July Mrs. Schmidt 
(which is not her name) received a wire from 
her husband to "come at once." She left at an 
hour's notice and the daughter remained be- 
hind "to be placed in a boarding school which 
must be on the sea front." 

The daughter was a fat, clumsy, ugly, sandy 
complexioned typical German. Suffice it to say 
that she attended a summer day party gowned 
in red plush with gold lace trimmings — she re- 
minded one of the Lord Mayor's coachman on 
November ninth. She was about eighteen and 
looked twenty-four. Her singing voice was the 
spoken admiration of her relatives and the aw- 
ful trial of suffering neighbors. But more of 
it later. 

The fourth of August came. It was Bank 
Holiday, a typical first-Monday-in-August ces- 
sation of all business. Crowds flocked to Hamp- 
ton Court, Kew, Richmond. It was a warm 
and fine day. I can recall that we were having 
afternoon tea when we remarked that people 



WAR AND WOMEN 7 

were returning much earlier than usual from 
their outings. Then we noticed the men— each 
one had his head buried in an evening news- 
paper. The tired children, adjunct of every 
outing, dragged behind, but the women for once 
stepped briskly out and leaned over to catch 
glimpses of the news print. 

There was an intangible tenseness in the air, 
a tenseness which has increased and throbbed 
through England ever since. I went out my- 
self and bought a paper— I forget whether it 
was the Evening News or Star. As I came in a 
rain had started to fall and a chill wind rose 
suddenly. My aunt was putting a match to the 
drawing-room fire as I reached the hall. The 
other two aunts were up-stairs. 

"Evie," I said, "we're all right— we're going 
to fight." 

I felt myself choking with excitement and 
yet strangely calm and self-possessed— the deci- 
sion was taken, we were all in it — all who 
counted. 

"Thank God," said my aunt, and I went to 
shout the news to the others. 

How in those three days we had longed for 



8 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

and dreaded it — it, that menacing thing we 
feared our then government would not grasp 
in a strangle hold. It was here. We wondered 
how the country would take it, and yet we could 
not doubt. Unconsciously we had always had, 
not so much dislike for the Germans, as a 
tolerant contempt. I think that describes the 
feeling — we bought the goods, for instance,, 
marked "made in Germany," but we secretly 
despised ourselves for pandering to our eco- 
nomical side by so doing. 

Now, with war, we could openly give voice to 
what we had only half thought before. To-day 
we still hold contempt for Germans. I do not 
think I, for one, have much tolerance. I do not 
think I shall ever learn to think otherwise. I 
have seen ruined towns, devastated cities, cathe- 
drals thrown to earth; I have seen mutilated 
men, tortured and ravished girls and women, 
mutilated and disfigured babies. No, I do not 
think I have any tolerance in my attitude toward 
the German people. I do not narrowly say 
there are no good Germans — there may be. I 
have met none with the exception of two who 
had long lived, one in Britain and the other 
in the United States. 



CHAPTER II 
MEN MUST FIGHT 

I'LL long remember that August evening 
round the fire. There sat the four of us. My 
three aunts and I — our men-folk scattered sheer 
across the globe. We have always been a fight- 
ing adventurous race — all soldiers or sailors. 
Was it not my grannie's family who *were 
Sinclairs — Sinclairs of Moneyshenare, that Sin- 
clair, himself the head of the clan, rode in the 
forefront of his eleven sons, the whole dozen 
of them mounted on white horses, to the relief 
of Derry, the time of the siege of sixteen hun- 
dred and ninety-eight? Sure it was, and haven't 
we the history of it written down. There were 
those of us who had died on France's fields 
'way back in times unknown, there were some 
who had fought through '70 — there was a grand 
uncle who had fought in the American Civil 
War — I'm sure I can't tell on which side. But 

9 



10 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

I know this that when I came to the States 
I was very keen to find whether any of his 
descendants were alive. I reckoned they would 
be in the East. I got to Boston in the spring 
of this year and determined to make a few 
enquiries. The morning after my arrival the 
newspapers were full — front-page headings — » 
of the fact that a certain man was to be exe- 
cuted for the murder of his wife — AND THE 
NAME WAS THE SAME AS MY OWN BE- 
FORE I WAS MARRIED! I have made no 
more enquiries ! 

We counted up who would go to war. As 
to any of us who were not already in the 
services keeping out of it, it never occurred 
to us. 

"There's Peter," it was Evie who named him. 
Peter Watson, called Peter because his chris- 
tened name was William John. There were the 
Ferrers and the O'Donnells and the Haigs. 
All of my clan on my mother's side. There 
was Uncle Robert's son, and from the "Small" 
side there were Tom and Hugh and the William 
Smalls, and the Robert Smalls, not to mention 
the Browns and some "out" connections called 




Hugh A. Small 



MEN MUST FIGHT 11 

Redmond. These were all cousins and brothers, 
stepbrothers and uncles — we have a fearful and 
awful connection. It was pretty near a platoon 
in itself that we could raise. Of course they 
all went. With the exception of one or two 
all are "gone West" in the first two years of 
the fighting. Good boys, we don't grudge you. 
We are full of sorrow, but so much greater 
pride. 

There were the acquaintances we had, un- 
countable it seemed, but we never doubted we 
would see them go and our faith was not be- 
trayed. 

Those were terrible days of excitement and 
stress and strain. Troop trains rumbled slowly 
by in the semi-darkness of warm August nights, 
all blinds drawn — the men, going to what — 
God alone knew, in utter, ghastly silence. 

It was then we began to realise war. In a 
night sentries had sprung up every few yards 
along the railway lines, the railroad tracks of 
the country were patrolled night and day. 
Bridges were watched and here and there news 
escaped of a piece of steel or log of timber or 
what might have been a bomb, being found 



12 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

across the railway beds. Now and again a 
soldier of the reserve who mounted this guard, 
was reported killed. 

The mutterings of resentment at the post- 
poned Naval Review died away. The fleet had 
vanished into a mysterious nothingness. Wins- 
ton Churchill was head of the Admiralty then, 
and there was Lord Charlie Beresford back of 
him. That postponed Naval Review saved Bri- 
tain, the Empire, the world — whoever planned 
it, and the credit has been given to several. 
Credit does not matter much one way or an- 
other these days — it is to whoever does the 
work honor must be paid. 

I went to town every day of course. The 
moratorium had been declared and banks were 
closed on certain days. Every one was con- 
fused in thought and action, many unneces- 
sarily so. Only the keen young men, and some 
keener middle-aged ones realised the situation. 
Whitehall was a seething mass of the "right 
sort" waiting to enlist. Scotland Yard only 
boasted one recruiting station and it proved 
utterly inadequate for the demands upon it. 
Men stood, a hundred, two hundred deep, wait- 



MEN MUST FIGHT 13 



ing in the hot sun for the privilege of taking 
the King's shilling. 

Young Territorial soldiers rushed about in 
service khaki. All had different stories as to 
where they were going, and not one knew. 
There was a magnificent state of complete 
secrecy kept by the authorities; the great 
British public — which tradition has is "a h'ass" 
— were wrath at this secrecy and demanded to 
know this, that and the other, not realising how 
disastrous public knowledge of vital informa- 
tion would prove. Our milkman expected to 
cross the Rhine "h'anywheres within the next 
month." Poor rosy-cheeked boy — "h'anywheres 
within the next month" he lay under a sod 
of France — pushing up the daisies as his com- 
rades put it. Eighteen years old "within a 
month" as his father told us when he took the 
son's place as delivery man. 

The women began to realise something of 
war next. A dozen organisations came into 
being for War Relief. Red Cross and the like. 
Little of system obtained at the outset — the 
only truly organised party was that of the one- 
time despised suffragettes and suffragists who 



14 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

have shown their constructive power and worth 
in a thousand ways since those days, and wiped 
out forever the memory, disagreeable in the 
minds of many, of the days of a destructive 
propaganda in search of a vote. 

But despite lack of system, every one was 
eager, every one was untrained, every one 
wanted to be doing and could not decide or 
did not know what to do. The only thing certain 
was that women knew they had a part in war, 
far greater than other wars. Mainly perhaps 
the women whose men-folk were in the regular 
army. The British "contemptibles." The main 
middle class British public was largely un- 
affected materially. Kitchener's Army was an 
unshattered dream as yet — as yet folk were 
only clamoring for a Kitchener at the War 
Office. The main ending to most people's con- 
versation at the time, overheard in train, bus 
or in the street, was "It will be over by Christ- 
mas." A month later, we were saying, "It 
must be over by Christmas." Now we are say- 
ing, and meaning it, "It won't be over till we 
win." 



CHAPTER III 

WOMEN IN WAR — WAITING 

THE "woman must weep" idea of war in- 
fluenced the attitude of the vast majority 
of us in Britain in the early days. Those who 
remembered the South African war were more 
energetic than those of us who had only tradi- 
tion of wars and soldiering to help in our under- 
standing. 

Women had a vast desire to do and no organ- 
ised effort for doing. Possibly the suffragists, 
militants of other days, were those who grasped 
the situation and, truth to tell, the opportunity 
first. Few of us actually saw that women's 
day had come, that democracy and equality 
and rights fought for for years, were now to be 
attained peacefully by the very fact that we 
were at war. 

The Red Cross, St. John's ambulance, the 
Voluntary Aid Detachment, all pre-war bodies, 
appealed for recruits and got hundreds. Red 
Cross nursing attracted a vast concourse of 

15 



16 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

girls and women; some admirably fitted for 
the work and some totally useless. Few rea- 
lised that Red Cross nursing was not just to 
sit by Tommy Atkins* cot, smooth his brow, 
wash his face or even sing the poor laddie to. 
sleep. 

"The V.A.D. (Voluntary Aid Department) ," 
said a prominent man on one occasion, "is no 
more than a matrimonial bureau." Soldiers 
have been known to marry their nurses and 
nurses' assistants — who would not be married 
to a soldier in these days? — but hundreds of 
girls were put to scrubbing floors in the hos- 
pitals and temporary annexes, cleaning the 
taps, peeling potatoes and never seeing a 
soldier at all, at all. Many gave up, not be- 
cause they failed to see the soldiers but because 
of the disagreeable nature of the work, or be- 
cause it was too heavy ; later they got different 
sorts of work ; others stuck to their job no mat- 
ter how heavy and many qualified and grad- 
uated to more important positions later on, 
none the worse for a hard apprenticeship. 

A thousand small schemes were launched, a 
dozen odds and ends of war societies, corps 



WOMEN IN WAR— WAITING 17 

and so forth sprang up weekly. The big mis- 
take was lack of unified effort. The work of 
one society overlapped the work of another. 
Useful endeavors were duplicated and became 
wasteful. Every one had the same aim, the 
same goal, the same desire to help, and every 
one, so to speak, was treading on the toes of 
his fellow. 

To-day, no, a bare year ago in the States, I 
could see the same duplication of endeavor, 
the same waste of essential energy. Good in- 
tentions all along the line, but too much individ- 
uality, too many separate bodies. It seems 
almost a heresy to voice it, but that is the main 
shoal on which the ship of women's work has 
foundered and sometimes almost sunk com- 
pletely. 

In the dark days of 1914-15, we of the old 
country were striving to understand, to apply 
National Service for Women. We knew what 
the men had to do. For ourselves we were 
on the wrong track. We were too eager, too 
aggressive. We have learned our lesson at last 
and at last applied it. We have found the solu- 
tion of Woman's National Service. We have 



18 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

joined the ranks and made good, just as the 
citizen army of the old land made good follow- 
ing in the footsteps of the old regulars. 

We spent our time, our energy, our mentality 
in fruitless, more or less, waiting — waiting for 
our men to go to the fighting front, waiting for 
news from and of them, waiting for news of 
their wounding or death. There was only one 
thing to be done in those days — wait futilely 
for some way to help. Scores had to help 
themselves and their families — they did not 
know how. Scores of others wanted to help 
nationally — they did not know how. All we 
could do was to wait and weary and worry 
amid the excitements, the alarms and the 
calamities which stunned though they never 
diverted our certainty in our men-folks' ulti- 
mate power to win. 

Those were certainly early days. One can 
look back and wonder at our stupidity, wonder 
that we did not see our way clear from the 
first minute — perhaps some did. To-day, calam- 
ities, excitements, alarms have followed thick 
and fast, yet we are still waiting, but it's a 
different kind of waiting. We are waiting with 



WOMEN IN WAR— WAITING 19 

sure knowledge of success — we have been 
weighed in the balance nationally and have 
not lacked — we have, thank God, found our- 
selves and found each other to the eventual good 
of all. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE SUNDAY IN SEPTEMBER 

COCKSPUR Street was an interesting clear- 
ing house of nations in those days. Leaden- 
hall Street ran it close, but the Western District 
Steamship offices were within easier reach of 
the crowds of Americans, South Americans and 
others who suddenly found themselves stranded 
in a country at war. 

Would the boats sail? Could they get ac- 
commodation ? The Nord deutcher Lloyd offices 
were a British recruiting station. The Hamburg 
American had closed doors. Thomas Cook and 
Son answered frenzied questions with imper- 
turbable calm. "They did not know." "No 
information." "Come back to-morrow." 

A few patient souls awaited the outcome with 
philosophic resignation and went about sight- 
seeing; others rushed to Liverpool or other 
ports with the idea of being "Johnny on the 
spot" should a boat sail. Yet others, foreseeing 
20 



THE SUNDAY IN SEPTEMBER 21 

the immediate invasion of England and down- 
fall of London, fled inland to country places — 
Stratford on Avon — Edinburgh, or north to 
Scotland. 

Millionaires were content with steerage pas- 
sages, luxurious personages preferred a deck 
bench to a "sinking ship." It was certainly 
an S. 0. S. cry. The man in the street, con- 
fident in Britain's might scornfully translated it 
"save our skins." 

And then there came that Sunday in Septem- 
ber, that awful, terrifying Sunday of heart- 
break; of almost despair. 

In the haziness of the early autumn dawn 
we were wakened, we could not tell why, but 
it seemed there was a distant rumbling, later 
we knew it was the faint echo of the guns in 
France coming across the Channel and pene- 
trating the morning quiet of a London Sunday. 
I went down-stairs early to brew our customary 
Sunday morning tea. The newspaper was on 
the door-step. The Observer had not altered 
its size in those days, no one had thought of 
paper and ink shortage. 

I shall never forget the drop, the actual 



22 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

physical drop which I felt my heart give. Our 
army was in retreat, orderly, fighting a rear- 
guard action all the way, but rapid retreat 
nevertheless. I forgot tea and all else and crept 
up-stairs softly as though a death were in our 
house, to whisper the news to my aunt. 

Then we comforted each other. The true 
British were never beaten. Even though the 
Huns outnumbered us ten and fifteen to one, 
even though they had gun after gun and we 
had one or two, mostly out-of-date and without 
ammunition supply, nothing could overwhelm 
our boys. Tommy Atkins was invincible. It 
was unthinkable that we should be defeated — 
impossible that the magnificent French troops 
should be swept aside and Paris reached. It 
was all impossible. 

It was a lovely September day. The sun 
poured down through a grey haze which drifted 
and eddied over the city. Church bells rang 
and worshipers went in summer gowns to 
service. 

We waited for news extras. We were the 
daughters and granddaughters and great-grand- 
daughters of soldiers. The extras came out — 



THE SUNDAY IN SEPTEMBER 23 

"British army still in retreat — Germans gain- 
ing. Enemy ten miles from Paris — six miles 
— Uhlans riding but three miles outside the fair 
city." 

And a rear-guard action all the way. A rapid 
march, skirmish order, an ambush, an hour, 
half an hour's delay of the enemy. . . a few more 
English, Scotch and Irish gone to join their 
forefathers who had given their blood and life 
on France's selfsame battle ground years be- 
fore. The French — there are not words to 
describe the heroism of the worthy sons of 
Jeanne d'Arc. 

That same Sunday afternoon our own Ger- 
man torture began. Sacha Schmidt, the niece 
of our good English neighbor, commenced to 
sing — and her aunt, her uncle, her cousins 
permitted it. In a raucous, penetrating, hateful 
voice she yelled at an open window and 
thrummed a piano in accompaniment — 
Deutschland ilber Alles — Die Wacht am Rhine, 
and half a dozen other songs in the hateful, 
guttural rhythm of her father's tongue. But 
Germany Over All was her favorite. Over 
and over again it hacked its horrible vibrations 



24 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

through the soft September air of an English 
Sabbath. I wonder how long an English song 
would have lasted in Germany on that day. 

Our windows were wide open as were those 
of the other houses in the avenue; we sat at 
them reading the news sheets or just thinking 
— thinking, thinking. That terrible retreat 
which was never a rout. That awful rear-guard 
action. Our boys, British boys, our regular 
soldiers, our few brave Territorial lads, drop- 
ping one by one, dozen by dozen, to the hum 
of German shells — and we listened to 
Deutschland, Deutschland! 

Who of us knew in that suburban avenue 
but that we were fatherless, husbandless, 
brotherless, even as the moments went by, and 
the sun went west as the souls of dear ones 
may have been travelling too. 

It got too much at last. The so-called music 
of the young female Hun drove us mildly 
Berserk. We started reprisals. It was my 
aunt who opened the piano, put the loud pedal 
at its loudest and banged out Rule Britannia, 
then God Save the King — my, how we sang 
it. The folks opposite took the hint, then those 



THE SUNDAY IN SEPTEMBER 25 

who lived two houses down. The British loyal 
airs and martial songs rang out high and 
triumphant. People walking on the street 
caught the inspiration, soon the enthusiasm 
bubbled. Almost one could see the thoughts 
which piled into the minds of the listeners. The 
news was bad, it might even come worse, but 
we were British and our soldiers were as Brit- 
ish as we. The music stopped. We listened. 
The Hun in the next house was quiet. We 
had had a first victory over the enemy. Very 
ridiculous maybe, very feminine possibly, very 
effective certainly. 

It was some three weeks later that the girl 
Hun went away. She was sent back to Germany 
with a bunch of others in exchange for English 
schoolgirls marooned in the enemy country — > 
and she started her journey in a taxi-cab dec- 
orated lavishly with the Red White and Blue 
of France and Britain flanking the gallant Red, 
Black and Gold of little Belgium. 

I wish now that we had been more far-sighted 
and less hotheaded, but did you ever see the 
Irish otherwise? We might have got some 
interesting items of news from the girl. Al- 



26 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

ways when we met her with her relations, she 
would remark to us, "I wish zo, me, that you 
Irish peoples would fight." That alone showed 
us how the spy system of Germany had pro- 
duced a line of evidence to prove disruption in 
the Empire. Little they thought that, for a few 
misguided persons, Irish peoples would fight 
and fight to the death, but not one another, nor 
yet their English comrade, Tommy Atkins. 
Another comment of the young lady was, "But 
we have ze wonderful zing unter der sea." 
The submarine had not yet made its murderous 
appearance, but presumably its coming was 
common knowledge to the German people. 
Later we broke off "diplomatic relations" with 
the girl's English friends, but before then they 
had told us that her father had had to turn 
over all his savings, not inconsiderable, as he 
was a reputed millionaire, to the German gov- 
ernment for war purposes. And that was in 
1914. Later still we sorrowed afar for these 
people for the eldest son — a fine upstanding 
youth of nineteen — gave his life for freedom 
on the ill-fated shore of Gallipoli. 



CHAPTER V 

NATIONAL SERVICE FOR WOMEN 

WE had hopes of unified effort in the 
spring and early summer of 1915 when 
the government ordered a registration of all 
women. We registered, eagerly, willingly. We 
filled in a vasty sheet of paper with vague an- 
swers to little less vague questions, excepting 
one — we were plumply and plainly asked our 
ages. I dare swear there were more women 
of twenty-five years in England in 1915 than 
in all the rest of the world put together! 

To the best of our ability we described what 
we could do. Painfully little it looked in cold 
ink. Some of us had a specialty, and the 
specialty looked the worse for not even re- 
motely appearing to be of war use. 

We despatched our sheets — envelopes sup- 
plied — and proceeded to wait For days we 
watched every mail. Every time a policeman 
passed the house we half hoped, half dreaded 
27 



28 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

that he would turn in and demand in the name 
of the King, the transference of our physical 
selves to another sphere of activity. For those 
who do not understand that British people are 
as free as air in a democratic sense, I would 
explain that "in the name of the King" is a 
formal method of proclaiming a necessary law. 
Nothing doing, however. As far as war work 
was concerned everything seemed napooed. 

Another three weeks went by and then we 
each received a khaki colored card. There 
was a number on it and a notice to the effect 
that if needed we would be "requested" to 
respond. No call came and presumably our 
cards are now so much waste paper, or again 
they may have been used in the complete and 
well organised system for recruiting women 
workers under Mrs. H. J. Tennant and Miss 
Violet Markham. 

My number was thirty, but as at the time 
I received it, I was on work "useful to the 
prosecution of the war" I did not bother any 
more about registration or war societies. 

It was the girls and women who never had 
worked to whom the new order of things proved 



NATIONAL SERVICE FOR WOMEN 29 

most difficult. "To do, but what to," was the 
problem, and more important still "how to do." 
It was hard for them to realise true National 
Service for Women. It was as hard four years 
ago for the British woman to see her path 
clearly as a war helper as it has been for the 
American woman of 1918 — harder possibly, 
because there was no pioneer ahead of them. 

After all what is National Service for Women 
— to do that thing which comes nearest to hand 
and to do it better to-day than it was done 
yesterday. 

It was the plain, ordinary monotony of the 
daily routine which irked our women amid 
all the turmoil and excitement. There will never 
be conscription of women officially in my opin- 
ion. Women are too fond of conscripting 
themselves. We have an uneasy habit of rush- 
ing headlong at things. We fly to work which 
may not be suitable to us either mentally or 
physically. 

War is doubly hard on women. Half of us 
can not do what we want. The most of us 
do duties which are irksome to us. A few thou- 
sands of us are at work which palls. We are 



30 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

bound up in monotony. We are hidden away 
from the light of publicity; our photos never 
get into the press with ourselves garbed in 
becoming uniforms. National Service to a 
whole host of us has to be carried on in the 
very prosaic petticoat. 

The British women of 1915 were in this case. 
All around was movement, purpose, enterprise 
— we were, most of us, forced aside, kept in 
the home — not by our men-folk nor yet tradi- 
tion, but by the mere fact that woman's place 
was not yet in the maelstrom of conflict. 

Yet in 1917 there were 804,000 extra women 
taken on officially to occupy positions of men 
gone to fight. 

That was the condition as British women 
faced it. Then their National Service actually 
came to them. Sister women of America, I 
would beg of you, do not force matters. If, un- 
happily, this war should continue many years 
longer, your chance of national service in the 
more public sense will be yours. Suffice it now 
to lessen the meat bill, eliminate the wheat ra- 
tion, tend the war garden, knit the khaki sock, 
remodel last year's gown and — SMILE. 



NATIONAL SERVICE FOR WOMEN 31 

The smallest service is of moment. Remem- 
ber that. Your individual service may appear 
to you of little use. It is of use. It is a link 
in the vast chain of war. You may look on 
yourself as an atom. Think a moment. Steel 
is composed of atoms. Suppose there were a 
flaw in the steel of one part of a British tank, 
what would happen if that flaw were undis- 
covered and the tank went into action? 

You may be an atom, but you are of impor- 
tance. You are here at this time for a purpose. 
Remember it, and be content with the National 
Service of the hour — the larger service will 
follow. 



CHAPTER VI 
SOLDIERS IN THE HOME 

WAR, I think, came home to me most 
thoroughly — its lighter side at all events, 
— one Saturday afternoon. My aunt and I were 
going along Chiswick High Road on the usual 
weekly prowl for provisions. Chiswick is an 
old time suburb of London. Hogarth lived 
there — you can pay sixpence any day and see 
his house, not to mention the mulberry tree. 
Horace Walpole had a house on the Mall, which 
same house was occupied by the late Sir Beer- 
bohm Tree and his wife. Chiswick was a rest- 
ing place for one of the Georges, I forget which 
— possibly the third — when he made trips to 
Hampton Court. Close by are Kew, and Brent- 
ford, and Turnham Green where Dick Turpin 
played pranks — it is an historic district. Now- 
adays it is prosaic enough. This special Satur- 
day afternoon the usual marketing crowd was 
out, perhaps there was a little added excite- 
32 



SOLDIERS IN THE HOME 33 

ment. We supposed there had been a funeral, 
or a band had passed or maybe a regiment of 
soldiers — there was always something doing 
on Saturday. 

Soldiers were everywhere anyhow. They 
drilled in the open spaces of the city. I saw 
a bunch of raw recruits on the square by Euston 
Railway Station once, drilling in shirt-sleeves. 
Uniforms were at a discount. Some of the men 
lacked an issue of full khaki and marched cheer- 
fully from the waist down garbed as civilians. 
Neither were there enough guns for drill, 
dummy rifles of wood took the place of the reg- 
ular article so sorely needed on the fighting 
fronts. 

But to return to the High Road. We had 
passed maybe half a dozen vehicles denuded of 
their horses, shafts skyward and "heeled" up by 
the pavement, with disconsolate drivers dis- 
coursing to interested onlookers. We real- 
ised something was up) — something more than a 
funeral. Then we saw an army sergeant, with 
him a police constable and a couple of soldiers. 
A bread van went by with a fine high-stepping 
chestnut between the shafts. The sergeant 



34 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

stepped down among the traffic with hand 
help up — his voice stentorian, his whole self 
apparently bursting with the importance of his 
mission. It was impressive anyhow. 

"In the name of the King," the driver pulled 
his horse almost to his haunches. We sprang 
to attention. Then we laughed. We knew the 
seriousness of the situation ; we knew the need 
of horses must be desperate or such methods 
would not be used, but the chagrin of the driver 
was amusing as he realised that his horse was 
commandeered. Then he climbed down to help 
unharness him while the sergeant entered in 
his book the name of the owner and other par- 
ticulars against the time when the government 
would pay for the animal. 

This was war in earnest. We knew that one 
thousand motor-buses had been lifted from the 
London street service in the first week or so 
of the war for the transportation of troops in 
France — but here was war in Chiswick. If we 
had only glimpsed another few weeks ahead ! 

That was when every home became a bar- 
racks. It was in Durbin and Alright's, the gro- 
cery store, or else Mackie's, the dairyman, that 



SOLDIERS IN THE HOME 35 

the rumor first originated. Any rumor which 
originated in either of those two places was 
pretty certain to be right — they were shops 
unquestioned for quality of goods and straight- 
dealing. 

Soldiers were going to be billetted on the 
civilians. 

In the early days we had camp and barrack 
accommodation for comparatively few of the 
recruits flocking to the colors. As many as 
thirty thousand men enlisted in one day. Up 
to May 25th, 1916, five million and forty-one 
thousand men had voluntarily joined the Brit- 
ish Army in the United Kingdom alone. To 
feed, clothe and house those troops was no 
small undertaking. 

"The soldiers will be here on Tuesday." 
That was the news one Saturday. We could 
hardly wait over the week-end. We were not at 
all clear as to how the billetting would be done. 
Tuesday came but no soldiers. 

"Billetters here Thursday." 

Thursday was early closing day in Chiswick. 
Thursday morning found all the housewives of 
the district laying in extra eggs and bacon and 



36 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

bread, unspoilable articles in case the soldiers 
did not come. They did not. We ate eggs, 
bacon and sausages until Monday. 

Monday, a police constable came to the door 
— "The registration — an order for our car- 
casses !" No ; the billetters. At last. 

"Aye," the constable was slow speaking and 
north country. "Aye — they're comin' — Friday 
I rackon." 

Then he asked how many rooms we had. We 
showed him our available space. We could take 
six men anyway — we were willing to house a 
company if we could. 

"Two," said the constable, "because of yer 
willingness to take more. One woman refused 
to take any — well, it's by way of being a com- 
mand — it's the lor anyhow, so we've given her 
six." 

It certainly was the law. An ancient statute 
was being made use of in the urgent need of the 
nation. We were glad to come under its action. 

But then those were very early days, and 
the average householder had not realised that 
the war was his or her own war, just because it 
was the nation's war. The average house- 



SOLDIERS IN THE HOME 37 

holder believed it to be the concern of the other 
fellow. The ordinary middle class man and 
woman with interests in commercialism, en- 
tirely apart from any army or navy life, had not 
realised in 1914, even in early 1915, that we 
were ALL fighting Germany, just as every 
German man, woman and child is fighting us, 
despite the statements of many and the belief 
of more that the officials and the Kaiser are the 
only ones to be cleared out of the way. We 
have a bigger proposition than that. I think 
it is being fully realised these days. 

Friday came. Thursday night we had dis- 
cussed what to "lay in" on the following morn- 
ing. Those soldiers would not know a hungry 
minute in our house, nor yet would they have a 
cold welcome. No soldiers appeared on Friday. 
We ate sparsely of the provisions so that if they 
came on Saturday there would still be plenty. 
Another Tuesday saw us eating further left- 
overs. Durbin and Alright (there being a Mr. 
and Mrs. Alright — Alright-Durbin being the 
heading to the marriage notice) ate left-overs 
for a week. They must have. They had pro- 
vided a generous meal for twenty soldiers, the 



38 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

number they meant to take in — chickens, ducks, 
ham, sausages, salads, pies. 

We resigned ourselves to waiting. Day 
passed day. We decided no soldiers were com- 
ing. Twice troops went through and rested, 
but only a matter of hours and then hotel and 
restaurant keepers handled the situation. 

It was Thursday, early closing day in Chis- 
wick. We were just thinking of bed — the old 
grandfather clock in the hall had groaned out 
the warning for ten, yet we were loath to leave 
the cheery blaze of the grate fire. We lingered 
fifteen minutes. Then we sat up suddenly. 

"Listen!" 

"Halt! Stand at ease!" 

There was the rattle of rifle butts on stone, 
the clank of accoutrement, the harsh grind of 
shod boots on pavement. 

"The billetters!" we whispered to each 
other. "Thursday — early closing — the billet- 
ters and nothing to eat !" 

It was a situation, that. 

"Tramp, tramp — halt!" 

The clang of our own front gate — we didn't 
give the knocker time to be swung; we opened 



SOLDIERS IN THE HOME 39 

the door and a cheery faced corporal handed 
over a couple of soldiers to our care. We signed 
for them as though they were express parcels. 
Got a document to return when the boys left us, 
which same document requested us to see that 
they were always in by ten o'clock of a night. 
The cheery corporal smiled "Good night !" We 
closed the door and faced our guests. 

Sturdy, young, tired, dirty — incredibly dirty, 
two boys of the Tenth Middlesex. We helped 
them to lay off their knapsacks, discard over- 
coats and unsling rifles. We brought them in 
to the fire. They were like old friends who had 
been parted from us for a long while. It was 
the same later with all the billetted boys of 
other months. 

There was Thomas — we always called him 
"little Thomas," not because he was small, but 
he seemed no more than a schoolboy. He was 
nearly nineteen as a matter of fact, but his 
round, rosy face beamed with youth and en- 
thusiasm and happiness. 

"I want to get a German," was the theme of 
Thomas. To get one, only one, that was enough. 
Poor, young little Thomas! First he was re- 



40 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

ported as missing, then a prisoner, but they 
found his mangled body later on the battle-field. 
Thomas got his German, and "got his" 'way 
back in 1915. 

Then there was Blake — twenty-three and a 
married man. He had not the robust good spir- 
its of Thomas. Blake had faced the hardships 
of life, had earned his way almost since baby- 
hood. He was a wee bit soured maybe and a 
trifle socialistic, but a good patriot and a sol- 
dier to the backbone. His wife lived only a 
short distance away in old Chiswick, but regu- 
lations did not allow of men being billetted on 
their own families. It seemed a hardship but 
must have had good reason back of the rule. It 
may have had something to do with the pay- 
ment — families received somewhere around 
seventeen cents per day per man, at least that 
was what the government regulations pro- 
vided that we should be paid. I have forgotten 
the circumstance of the payment. I am pretty 
certain it was not forgotten by the authorities* 

Blake was transferred to the artillery after 
he had left us, and later he became a driver. 
He came to see us after his first wound. Three 



SOLDIERS IN THE HOME 41 

horses, he told us, had been shot from under 
him, the fourth had had its head blown off and 
Blake had received the remainder of the scat- 
tering shell in his stomach. It was a nasty- 
wound and he walked almost double and leaned 
heavily on a stick. I suppose he got better and 
returned to France. I don't know. Blake 
passed out of our ken; like so many others — 
"ships in the night." 

But, it was Thursday and early closing. 
Soldiers were swarming in every house. It 
might be we could get provisions. We went out. 
Yes; Mackie's was open, Durbin and Alright 
realised the immediate need and had lifted a 
half shutter off the door. The situation was 
saved. We returned armed with ham and sau- 
sages. 

"What do you care to drink ?" 

"Minerals," said Thomas. Our faces fell — 
we hadn't thought of minerals, otherwise 
aerated or carbonated waters — lemonade, gin- 
ger beer and so forth. 

"Take anything given you," Blake admon- 
ished the wee fellow ; he had seen or sensed our 
crestfallen attitude, so cocoa was the supper 



42 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

drink. We blessed Blake for the moment, but 
little Thomas had his fizzy water every night 
thereafter. 

We billetted soldiers on and off for quite a 
time, in some districts as late as 1917 it was 
still in vogue, and now I understand soldiers 
still are billetted in certain parts. 

We liked the boys. They were little trouble. 
They tramped in and out as their fancy took 
them, cleaned buttons and polished bayonets in 
the kitchen, whistled and sang, told stories or 
sat and read when their duties left them free. 
All of them were full of enthusiasm, patriotism 
and an entire absence of realisation that they 
were doing something fine, something big, some- 
thing great in offering life for the sake of 
others. God bless you, boys — God rest you, 
boys, wherever you may be. 



CHAPTER VII 

WOMEN — ENDURING 

IT WAS in Chattanooga, Tennessee, that a 
lady made the remark to me, "This is a 
mental war." I agree. This is a mental war 
for women. It is also a mental war for the boys 
in the trenches, though I believe they hardly 
realise it as against their physical condition, 
but for women it is wholly mental. The Ger- 
mans know this and the Germans are acting 
upon it all the time. They have acted upon this 
knowledge for these many years. 

They spread propaganda, they commit atroc- 
ities, they trade in frightfulness. They are 
gambling on the endurance of women. They 
do not know the temper of the free woman. 

Women are left behind to work or wait — for 
companionship they have imagination, and the 
German method is to stimulate imaginations 
already vivid. They tell stories of demoralised 
soldiers, of diseased and defective men return- 

43 



44 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

ing to homes once happy; they picture horrors 
only they can conceive because only they could 
produce them, they tell of wrongs only such as 
they commit. 

I was guest of honor at a luncheon where a 
woman made the statement that every return- 
ing soldier would be a social menace. She be- 
lieved her statement, she had received it as fact 
from a presumably reliable source. She sat 
there calmly and unconsciously insulted every 
American mother. The sons of many mothers 
I have seen are so nurtured, so trained, so 
guided that though surrounded by social evils, if 
such were the case, which it is not, they will 
be immune for the very memory of the waiting 
women-folk at home. 

"More spiritual than material" — how I have 
longed to convince the women of America that 
their help must be so. You can't go across to 
France, nor England. Don't try, don't em- 
barrass the government which is already over- 
taxed. Many thousands of Canadian women 
went over; it was all in good faith. They 
wanted to be near their men-folk. They did not 
understand the situation over there — the state 



WOMEN— ENDURING 45 

of congestion as to living room, the condition of 
existing on war rations — just so much and no 
more. Many of them got stranded and had to 
be sent back at the expense of the mother gov- 
ernment. The women must be content at home, 
hard though it be. Yet it is possible to help 
from a distance. 

Think health, think strength, think good, 
think safety, think strong thoughts of glory, 
of honor, of victory and you help your boy. See 
him mentally as you would have him be. Be 
brave yourself so that he may be brave. Cer- 
tainly much of his welfare is in your power — 
materially, yes, but spiritually to greater de- 
gree. The government clothes him, feeds him, 
pays him, transports him from point to point; 
if through mischance he be wounded the gov- 
ernment again, through the Red Cross, cares 
for him, physics him, cures him. The govern- 
ment is a corporate body — the government is a 
thing — the government is a vast machine. Spir- 
itually it is helpless, mentally it is use- 
less in helping your boy. No matter how 
great, the government is without a soul. You, 
alone, you women-folk, are the souls upon which 



46 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

the boys you send so willingly can depend. You 
are the enduring all to them. 

Your thoughts will aid them, your attitude 
will hold their balance true, your mental state 
will react on theirs. You women, working or 
waiting, by your endurance, you are winning 
or losing the war. Which? It is yours to 
choose, and is there choice? It is yours to win. 

Self-pity is the basis of the wrong outlook 
of many. "What shall I do if he is taken — 
what shall I do— I— I— I?" 

What of him? What of hundreds of women 
whose men are gone already? What of such as 
a friend of mine whose husband is facing death 
in France, while she faces at home, three 
thousand miles from her partner's comforting 
arms, the valley of the shadow where we women 
travel to fetch back to light the tiny lives of 
future mothers and fathers of men? 

What of such as this — Mrs. P. travelled on 
the Lusitania on her last fated trip. She had 
with her her small daughter of almost three 
years. The vessel was struck and perished. 
This mother wrapped the girlie in her arms; 
some one fastened life-belts on them, some one 



WOMEN— ENDURING 47 

helped them into a life-boat, then the huge, 
sinking ship turned over and plunged down- 
ward, carrying that full life-boat in its swirl. 
Mrs. P. reached the surface, floated helplessly 
and then found her child had been torn from 
her hold. It seemed that long hours afterward 
she was helped on a raft by two men, one of 
whom in a little dropped exhausted and disap- 
peared. Later still she was picked up by an 
Irish fishing boat and brought to safety. Five 
weeks of illness followed, illness caused by 
shock and exposure, but more by the tragic end- 
ing to the tiny beloved life. This mother re- 
covered ; she got back her mental poise, she re- 
claimed her faith and for the sake of Liberty 
and Love, which is the world's inheritance, she 
went out and spoke to crowds urging men to 
enlist, urging women to work. She told her pa- 
thetic story. I have heard her — in calm, cour- 
ageous tones ; her voice was strong, clear. She 
called on all of us to help. I have seen a huge 
theatre packed with an audience holding its 
breath and gripping the seat rails ; I have heard 
the huge sob rise from five thousand throats of 
men and women alike as the mother spoke her 



48 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

last few words, "And — friends — I lost my 
baby!" 

There is woman — enduring ! 

Have you heard of the French woman who 
paced the platform of a base railroad station, 
keeping step with a fine soldierly youth? Have 
you heard how she smiled and laughed and 
waved him a gay adieu as the train carried him 
out of sight and onward to the muddy, blood- 
soaked trenches? Have you known how she 
broke down in the almost empty station and 
sobbed as though her heart would break? And 
the reason — the youth was her fourth — her last 
son. Three others had given life itself to 
France and France's cause on France's un- 
sought battle-fields. She was sending her only 
remaining boy away with a smile and a cheer- 
ful memory. She — a woman enduring. 

Such superbness of bearing seems almost im- 
possible, yet these are only three instances of 
what thousands have done ; are doing ; will do. 

I remember talking with a young munition 
girl. She did her eight-hour day, six days a 
week, sometimes seven when pressure was at 
its height. With three others she lifted shells 



WOMEN— ENDURING 49 

from a stack to a wagon, each shell weighing 
twenty-eight pounds; and day after day, week 
after week, hour by hour, she kept that up with- 
out faltering or tiring. 

"How can you do this — how do you keep up — 
how do you endure?" 

"Why?" Her astonishment was genuine. 
"Don't you know why we women endure ; don't 
you know? — then I will tell you. 

"They murdered my Jack with gas I" 

There is the answer. In 1914, 1915, 1916, 
1917 and now as I write in 1918 women are 
keeping up. If the Germans had fought fair, 
if they had been square and straight as far as 
war allows, no one knows how we might, as 
women, have looked upon the war. But they 
did not. They used devilish devices against our 
men — ours — our sons, our fathers, our hus- 
bands, our brothers, our sweethearts. "They 
murdered my Jack" — not only one, but hun- 
dreds. 

In 1930, if need be, if through some dark, ter- 
rible need, this war continues, then will every 
woman of every Ally be keeping up. 

This is war and we are women — enduring. 



CHAPTER VIII 

PETER AND THE CANADIANS 

THE Canadians, the First Contingent and 
the first of any of the overseas troops, 
landed in England in October of 1914. We 
were very excited about it. We had no definite 
news as to whether Peter Watson would come 
with them or not, but Peter came of our own 
fighting stock, his father a soldier, his uncles 
and cousins, his grandfather and great-grand- 
father. It was not likely that Peter would miss 
the scrap. 

Every time I caught sight of the trim, tight- 
fitting Canadian uniform, I felt a thrill of an- 
ticipation. The blue shoulder strap was a sign 
for us to stop, almost to stare. The overseas 
boys were magnificent specimens of young, 
virile manhood. They fancied themselves not a 
little too. Small wonder when every girl 
openly showed her admiration. The western 
boys wore very neatly fitted tan boots. They 
50 



PETER AND THE CANADIANS 51 

were reported "rotten" as to wearing quality — 
that was nothing to us — the trim footgear was 
a special delight. 

It was a matter of more than ordinary in- 
terest to see a Canadian, officer or man, it was 
immaterial which, in a restaurant. First, they 
"shook" salt over their food all at once. They 
cut up all their meat, then laid aside the knife, 
transferred the fork to the right hand and ate 
straight ahead without a pause beyond breath- 
ing or talking. They asked for iced this, that 
and the other. Ice, for a lot of us, is a thing 
one gets hurriedly from the fishmonger when 
unexpected illness comes in the home! And 
they asked always for "ice-cream" — accent on 
the cream. One young lad asked for a "Merry 
Widow Sundae," and was given the icy stare 
by the misunderstanding waitress. 

"Lyons," good old Lyons, was the favorite 
eating ground of the Canadian boys. Shortly 
after they came, Lyons' Strand Corner House 
was opened and sprung to Canadian fame — as 
well as metropolitan — right away. When bil- 
letted at the Cecil, it was somewhat of a joke 
between my friend Amy Naylor and myself to 



52 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

recognise among the economical diners at the 
Corner House, the young overseas officers who 
were registered at, slept at, and addressed let- 
ters from the tonier Hotel Cecil. 

Then Peter came. He did not write, nor even 
phone us. He just walked in as nonchalant as 
ever. The same old Peter, a trifle broader, a 
trifle hardier perhaps, but slow, deliberate, 
fatalistic as of old. He had the same old diffi- 
culty in keeping his old brown pipe alight, the 
same husky, cultivated tones in his voice. It 
was strange to meet him again so thoroughly 
grown up as we both were since our last meet- 
ing. 

Peter philosophised quite a bit when he told 
us things which had happened in Canada. We 
found from him that it was a country where 
one could be "up against it" quite as easily as 
at home. Peter had struck the West at rather a 
bad time anyhow — just after a big boom. He 
had landed, for no definite reason, at Berlin, 
Ontario — now renamed Kitchener ; stayed there 
only a little while and eventually made his way 
to Calgary in Alberta. As a matter of fact, 
Peter had found Calgary a cold and very lonely 




Peter 



PETER AND THE CANADIANS 53 

place, the folks in the main alien to himself, or 
he to them, though he spoke of the wonderful 
kind-heartedness of the western populace. He 
told little of Canada after all, but switched 
away from it to memories of the time he had 
spent in Essen while in Germany. He re- 
called things he had seen in the great Krupp 
city and asked if we remembered how in 1911 
he had told us the war with Germany would 
come by 1915. He was a bare six months out 
in his reckoning. He had read the indications 
aright even so early as three years before the 
Hun took open action. 

Peter had enlisted in the Tenth Battalion, 
First Canadians, recruited mainly from Cal- 
gary and immediate district. They became the 
famous "Fighting Tenth" with undying glory 
won at St. Julien Wood. 

With Peter actually in the house we had now 
an opportunity to see the Canadian uniform 
close at hand. It was of neater cut than our 
boys* and had a straight band collar. Peter 
wore the blue lapellette of the infantryman, and 
had he lived would have been entitled to the red 
and blue chevrons which my husband wears — 



54 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

the honor badge of going among the first. 
Peter sported on his boots thick embroidery of 
Salisbury Plain mud, and told us almost unbe- 
lievable tales of the thickness and stickiness and 
continuity of that same mud. 

Peter came to see us often. He and I 
lunched out, dined out and went to a few thea- 
tres together. It was with him I was at the Col- 
iseum when there was an Allied display and we 
bobbed up and down in our seats for a solid 
half -hour while the national airs of one nation 
followed on the heels of the other — it was a 
great game. We could hear in audible tones 
folk asking "Which is that?" when some un- 
familiar tune rang out — after all there are a 
good many Allies. 

Then I met any number of Peter's pals. I 
only remember two by name — Sandy Clark and 
Farmer. Sandy was an architect, Scotch born, 
but with his business established in Calgary. 
He was killed in June, 1916 — I should not have 
known only Jack Vowel sent me his shoulder 
badge, CIO. Sandy was in the Machine Gun 
Section of the Tenth then — a corporal — and a 
sniper got him. It was Sandy who was in a 



PETER AND THE CANADIANS 55 

dugout eating a meal of a bully beef sandwich 
when a whizz-bang blew the dugout in. Sandy- 
scraped himself free and strolled — that is the 
word Jack used when telling me of the episode 
— along the trench. Jack was on sentry duty 
and Sandy sat down on the firestep close by 
him. He carefully dusted his sandwich of the 
mud which had enveloped it, then very delib- 
erately ate it mussed as it was. Just as delib- 
erately he filled and lighted his pipe, took a few 
puffs, then calmly and without emphasis re- 
marked to no one in particular, "That was a 
close one !" That, being the whizz-bang which 
had buried him. 

They buried Sandy close to the trench where 
he fell, when night came. Poor old Sandy, he 
was typically Scotch, apparently slow, with a 
dry humour all his own. I can always re- 
member his appearance. His cap was too small 
and he had to keep it on his head with the chin 
strap down. He looked like a small boy grown 
up, whose hat is kept on with elastic. It was 
Sandy who in a word, unconsciously, told us the 
way of British women in war. 

"Do your people expect you?" we asked. He 



56 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

was en route to Edinburgh the first time Peter 
brought him in. 

"Oh, I didn't write I had enlisted, but my 
sister said in her last letter, 'When do you ex- 
pect you will arrive home?' They know I'm 
coming all right, and they know I would not 
dare come except as a soldier — why, they 
wouldn't own me !" 

It was Peter who first slept on the old ma- 
hogany sofa we had brought from Gallina. The 
billetters were in the house and we had no 
other room. That old sofa is the longest thing 
I can recall. I remember where it stood in the 
dining-room with the silver fox rug thrown 
across it. Now, in a rejuvenated overcoat it 
has crossed the Atlantic with us. It is mine 
now, but never again shall a soldier sleep on it 
with my knowledge. Of all the boys who slept 
on it while our house was so crowded not one 
but has gone West, with the exception of good 
friend Ben Appelbe. I may be superstitious, 
but so it is. 

Outside Pinoli's restaurant by the Wardour 
Street entrance — the building ran clear through 
to Rupert Street — was the last place and time I 



PETER AND THE CANADIANS 57 

saw Peter. We didn't know it was to be the 
last, but Peter, we knew, had a trace of the 
family second sight. It was unusual of him 
and I wondered often why he should have 
kissed me good-by twice — but he did. We are 
an undemonstrative family. It was raining 
heavily too, and he had gone quite a few steps 
up the street, then he returned and repeated 
the parting. He was on his way out to Bed- 
ford Park to see our aunts, and later they re- 
marked how lingeringly he had walked away 
from the gate when his short little visit was 
over. Old man Peter — you knew. To-day we 
know you are well, are happy, are living still, 
though we do not see you. 

Sandy Clark and Farmer were both of the 
party at lunch in Pinoles. Farmer arrived late. 
The names of the others are confused in my 
mind. Peter stood treat, and he insisted on 
choosing some light wine — it was Italian — for 
us to drink. We drank our healths and pledged 
ourselves to meet at that same table after the 
war. Never pledge a soldier's return whether 
in wine or any other liquid. 

Some day I shall go over to London; some 



58 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

day I shall go to Pinoli's, and lunch at that 
same table on the left-hand side, four tables 
down from the door. I shall lunch alone — quite 
alone. Of all the young folk of that party, 
hardy young soldiers for the most part, I the 
exception — I am left alive on this earth. 

The next we heard from Peter was a field 
post-card. He was in France and well. The last 
we heard of him was when young Art Chisholm 
saw his photograph and exclaimed that he had 
ridden from Bailleul on the ill-fated April 
twenty-second to the front line in his company, 
although then he did not know who Peter was, 
nor ever supposed he would. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE FIRST WAR CHRISTMAS 

FOR years we had not had what we called 
a "jolly" Christmas. We had only our 
four selves to sit down at the festive board. We 
celebrated all right, gave each other gifts and 
gave some to friends outside the family, and 
"did well" one year or "not so well" other 
years as to presents from outside to ourselves. 

We had had happy Christmases, but always 
quiet. We had roasted the noble bird, stuffed 
him with chestnuts, ate him and the usual ap- 
purtenances with gusto — rested after our din- 
ner, and the wise two of us indulged in tea later 
in the evening, taking it as St. Paul of old rec- 
ommended the taking of spirits ! Then we slept 
off the effects of "big eats" and dreamt of the 
bone picking of the day to follow. 

This Christmas of 1914 was not materially 
different. It was still possible to buy turkey, 
still allowable to revel in plum pudding, still 

59 



60 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

within bounds of propriety to procure a bottle 
of jimmy John, even a liqueur was not out of the 
question. 

We did all of these usual things. By the 
eighteenth of the month, just as usual, we had 
received our first present — five pounds of 
Forster Green's "Best," otherwise a tin of tea 
from old Irish friends. And now that I think of 
it, there was a difference in that after all — the 
,five pounds came in a paper bag instead of a 
tin. We thought maybe it was a still better 
quality than usual but it wasn't. It was war. 
By Christmas Eve we had speculated on all 
"possibles" in the way of outside gifts and had 
been disappointed on most — also as usual. Per- 
haps the most notable omission was the cus- 
tomary cream given by the dairyman. We little 
thought how a Christmas three years ahead 
would be. Turkeys unprocurable, meat unbuy- 
able, fowl not to be had (we call small birds 
such as hens, ducks, etc., fowl in the old coun- 
try). 

"We bought a rabbit, jugged it and pretended 
it was hare!" That is what friends wrote us 
last Christmas. And we noted the spirit which 



THE FIRST WAR CHRISTMAS 61 

pretended that rabbit was hare. We are going 
to win on that — the temper of a people which 
is good under minor hardships such as these, 
trying as they are, is not the temper of a people 
who can ever know defeat. 

Yet; there did seem some difference in that 
Christmas four years ago. It was in the air. 
An intangible something. There was a zest and 
enthusiasm about us, a tenseness, an inexpli- 
cable excitement. We mourned the boys of our 
family who had gone West, we sorrowed with 
numbers of friends whose dearest ones had 
made the supreme sacrifice. We felt all the con- 
centrated sympathy which wells up in the 
mother-soul of women whether they be mothers 
in truth or no, for the crippled boys, the blind, 
the wounded who already moved slowly in and 
out among us in weary convalescence — vic- 
tims of the awful Mons, the Marne, the Aisne, 
and the first Ypres. It was in the October when 
Ypres was first attacked that Ouseley Davis 
"got his." He was killed outright. The brav- 
ery of his mother's letter to us mirrored the 
spirit of countless parents yet to lose their all 
in years ahead. 



62 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

The Christmas chimes still rang in those 
early days. The menace of air raids had not 
yet made it necessary for us to curb the call to 
prayer, nor to stop the services of evensong or 
at Christmas that of Watch Night. Big Ben 
himself still rang the hours as he had done for 
a century before. His great round dial was still 
illumined nightly. 

In 1914 the chimes wakened us with a greet- 
ing, the same old bells sounded the old, old 
message: "Peace on earth; goodwill toward 
men — Unto us a Son is born, unto us a Child is 
given." The year of agony and sacrifice and 
suffering was not yet. We hoped and prayed 
that peace might be soon again on earth. And 
yet it seemed as though the angels hovered 
near, as though the angels were proclaiming the 
gospel of hope and joy and eternity ; the angels 
who had wept with sorrowing home people in 
the months when a son was lost, a husband, a 
brother, a sweetheart. The angels who had 
miraculously taken form and shown themselves 
in glory to our sinking heroes of Mons. The 
angels whose voiceless weeping had swept 
across trenches where heroes had fallen in life's 



THE FIRST WAR CHRISTMAS 63 

prime — fallen that others might live. Those 
angels called "Peace" and there was no peace. 
There was no peace, there could be no peace for 
the very deeds over which the angels had wept 
— there were wickedness and barbarism ; there 
were women and old men and tiny babies mu- 
tilated and outraged ; cities ruined and churches 
destroyed — the world made a desolate place. 

The women, the fatherless children, sorrowed 
this Christmas, a sorrow of soul deepness; a 
sorrow which can not be "suaged" till the beasts 
of Militarism, of Conquering Might and of 
Horror untold, be swept from earth — from the 
earth they have denied with their machinations 
this forty years. Not till then, and even in 1914 
we recognised it, not till then can there be 
peace. 

It was a happy Christmas, but not a merry 
Christmas. We can but wish that each Christ- 
mas which comes be still happy, even though 
the Angel of Mourning has passed the home and 
in passing has rubbed from our lintel and door- 
posts the red signal of safety to our beloved 
ones. The merry Christmas must wait its re- 
turn till the crime of the ages be wiped out ; till 



64 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

the Hun of to-day be crushed. The merry 
Christmas can not be till the chimes may ring 
again, and till the flashing lights may glow 
toward Heaven. 

The merry Christmas will come with the 
Christmas of Thanksgiving when Angels and 
Heroes of War will join in a chorus of adulation 
which shall reach to Earth in glorious sound, 
rolling onward in ever broadening volume — 
"Peace on earth ; goodwill to men — Unto us a 
Son is born — Unto us a Child is given." 



CHAPTER X 

THE INVISIBLE INCOME 

EARLY in 1915, a situation showed itself 
in England which at the time seemed a 
problem difficult of solution. This was the ques- 
tion of how to live on nothing a year, a question 
which had to be answered immediately by hun- 
dreds of women faced by it for the first time. 
And there was a worse question for them to face 
along with it — how to fend for themselves. 

They were "gentlewomen." Women and girls 
gently nurtured, gently reared, sheltered by 
their men-folk from all the buff etting of a world 
which is unfriendly at the best of times and at 
all times seemingly hostile to the novice in 
affairs. 

There was the woman of uncertain years who 
depended, probably, on a small annuity and the 
largess of a brother. The brother was gone 
to war and the small annuity all the smaller in 
contrast with increasing prices. There was the 



66 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

woman whose income came from rents and 
whose tenants, through equal necessity, cut ex- 
penses by moving to lesser quarters, or the 
woman whose houses were vacated by families 
whose bread winner was gone to the front line 
and the home in consequence broken up. 

There were the women who worked in their 
homes at needlecraft elaborating articles of lux- 
ury forbidden and forgotten in these days of 
stress. 

There were the daughters of soldiers — officers 
and men — trained to do nothing, brought up in 
comparative luxury, leading a more or less aim- 
less life of parties, golf, motors, tennis, boating, 
the unconfessed object of their lives to be mar- 
ried and to continue the same life at the ex- 
pense of a husband instead of a father. These 
were suddenly given the proposition to solve 
of how to live on nothing. They had to find 
work and work of a remunerative character. 

There were the wives of young men who 
rushed to the colors. The family income disap- 
peared with the family earner, the paid posi- 
tion, or the earning profession. The govern* 
ment separation allowance for the families of 



THE INVISIBLE INCOME 67 

officers or men amounted to little as far as living 
on it was concerned, if the recipients had a cer- 
tain appearance to keep up in the circle of the 
average middle class. The soldier's separation 
allowance to the family of the working class, if 
I may be allowed distinctive terms in a world 
of democracy, was rather an addition in many 
cases, taking into consideration also that there 
was one less to feed and clothe and that one a 
man. But the family of the young lawyer, the 
young banker, the city clerk, the lately finished 
doctor — those were the women who felt the im- 
mediate pinch of necessity, the immediate need 
of doing something. 

The young married woman and the middle- 
aged felt the circumstances the most bitterly. 
In 1914 and prior to it, the employer of the old 
country had an inexplicable but rooted objec- 
tion to employing married women. I have 
known married women who wished to return 
to office work or store clerking for some finan- 
cial reason, take off their wedding ring and re- 
sume their maiden name. It was only then that 
they found it possible to obtain a position. What 
the unfounded objection was is beyond me to 



68 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

explain; whether the married woman had 
gained a certain self-reliance and independence 
of spirit, whether she was not afraid to "speak 
her mind" on occasion — whatever it were, the 
fact remained, married woman help was at a 
discount in the commercial positions. 

Then there was the unoffending middle-aged 
woman. The frankly middle-aged had many 
grievances. Her indignation began to rise. It 
needed to be stimulated. Her grievances were 
well founded. 

The position was this : There were ladies of, 
say, forty-two, forty-five to fifty-two years of 
age, anxious to obtain work, some through sheer 
necessity, some in order to help on the winning 
of the war. Each one on trying for work was 
informed that she was too old. I knew many 
personally in such case. They were strong, 
capable, experienced in many ways. 

There was a government limitation of age, 
and like a government minimum wage it led in 
all things. I had much to do for a short while 
with some of the many Labor Exchanges. Most 
excellent institutions they are too. On enquiry, 
the age limit for woman labor was thirty-eight 



THE INVISIBLE INCOME 69 

or forty. The Labor Exchanges are a govern- 
ment institution. There was a limit on the ages 
of women employed through them, yet in the 
government, in the Cabinet itself, there were 
men over fifty, approaching seventy in some 
cases. Army appointments for men went by 
seniority — the older women were thrust aside. 

I knew one lady. She was fifty-two and said 
so. She had given her two sons to fight for 
Liberty. They had been her main support ; now 
they were gone she had to increase her income 
by some other means. She was a widow, had 
known the joy and agony of birth ; had known 
the horror of parting by death. Now, in the 
stress of war she was alone, and officially use- 
less. Could she get work? No. She had 
passed the age limit. She was supposedly unfit 
and yet, strong and well as she was, she was 
compelled to live — to live, she had to work. 

Could there be others than she more fitted to 
help on war work? Had she not reason to 
strive to keep her home together to welcome 
back the boys whom the good God might spare 
her? Had she not reason to wish to help the 
nation to her utmost? Her activity, her ca- 



70 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

pacity for strenuous work, her eagerness and 
her broad outlook on life were thrown aside be- 
cause she had lived twelve years longer than 
some others. An insurance company would not 
refuse her premium, given their medical officer 
was satisfied. 

We had to help the middle-aged woman. We 
had to prove that the modern woman over forty 
was as capable as Florence Nightingale, Har- 
riet Martineau, Julia Ward Howe, who did not 
stop work and go on the "unfit" shelf when they 
reached forty. 

Until the war, although a problem, yet it was 
not so acute, this of the middle-aged woman. She 
was able often to exist, one can't call it living, 
on a meagre income. In 1914-15 that income 
was totally inadequate. Often she took in pay- 
ing guests or kept a seaside boarding-house. 
After war such means of livelihood became 
practically nil. The embargo on age had to be 
taken off. 

I did my small bit to help. The then editor 
of a popular woman's paper published weekly 
in London was Thomas Sapt. He was reorgan- 
ising Every woman's and he approached me 



THE INVISIBLE INCOME 71 

to run a "Woman Workers' Section." I was to 
edit the section, write a weekly article of cheer 
and advice, and answer all enquiries, helping 
where possible those who needed help to get po- 
sitions. 

It was most interesting always ; it was piti- 
ful at times. We received letters of heart-break 
and letters of stern courage against terrible 
odds. All were genuinely seeking help and as 
genuinely we sought to give it. We were able 
to place many in positions and we were also able 
to put many others in the right direction for 
training or for work. 

Lack of training was the big stumbling block, 
few had any idea of specialization, many had 
even no preference as to activity; most were 
utterly at sea as to any method of commercial- 
ising their own talents ; the great majority suf- 
fered from an entire lack of any business quali- 
fication. 

It made a big impression upon me. I saw 
clearly and emphatically the need for every girl, 
no matter what her standing in life, no matter 
what make of spoon (metaphorically) was be- 
tween her lips at birth, EVERY girl should be 



72 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

given a trade or a profession, EVERY girl 
should be given a sufficiency of training in bus- 
iness affairs — typewriting, shorthand, some- 
thing of bookkeeping, how to handle her money, 
how to buy and how to sell, some idea of method, 
system and efficiency. Now that I have the 
blessed gift of a daughter myself, she shall be 
shown the necessity of learning a means to make 
her own livelihood. If need be, I would have 
it that she depended, when of proper age, on 
her own resources for a time. Anything to give 
her confidence in her own power, in her own 
right to share of the world's goods when she 
works for that share. 

A large, world-known department store had 
two hundred of the male employees enlist in 
three days. Everywoman's heard of the cir- 
cumstance. Two hundred women and girls 
were required to take the men's places. We in- 
serted a notice, specifying that a month's inten- 
sive, efficient training would be given in sales- 
manship by the Casson Efficiency Engineering 
Firm, that a small weekly salary would be given 
while training and that these duly qualified and 
satisfying the examiners would receive perma- 



THE INVISIBLE INCOME 73 

nent positions. We received seventeen hundred 
applications from needy and utterly untrained 
women. Some of the letters showed at least 
power of imagination as to possible duties — 
others were hopelessly astray. 

I had another case of a position to fill — a 
woman office manager to control a staff of some 
thirty girls. I had many capable applicants. 
There was one who in appearance was in all 
ways suitable. When I questioned her, her own 
idea of qualification for controlling stenograph- 
ers was the fact that she had kept house for her 
father and controlled five servants ! Poor soul. 
Those were early days of war. Bitter experi- 
ence has taught many since then. 

American mothers, see to it that your 
daughter — no matter how rich she may be — 
can care for herself financially — not be de- 
dependent entirely upon a husband when she 
leaves the parental shelter. 

Take this case: Through Everywoman's I 
had an application from a Mrs. B. A young 
woman — just twenty-five. She had married 
at an early age and had five little children. Her 
husband had been in the Territorial army, 



74 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

had volunteered for France in August of '14, 
had fought and been wounded. He returned 
when his wound was healed, got shell shock 
and had become insane. Again, it was early 
days of the war. He was not dead, only con- 
fined in an asylum, possibly for years, more 
likely for life. She was not a widow, a 
widow's pension could not be claimed, nor chil- 
dren's allotment; his separation allowance 
ceased, his salary had stopped when he left his 
position at the call of his regiment. He was 
not dead and insurance would not be allowed. 
That young woman was left to face the world 
worse than alone. She had to fend for herself 
and five little ones — feed them, clothe them, 
educate them, and she had nothing. She had 
no relations to turn to. She was a good 
mother and an average cook — of the business 
world, of the industrial work she was totally 
ignorant. She did not know how to look for 
a position in the first place. Fortunately 
through our paper, we found her a position 
which tided over her immediate extremity and 
later led to better. 

Such cases met us every day or two. Can 



THE INVISIBLE INCOME 75 

you wonder that I — that we, who know, who 
have seen these things, preach "preparedness" 
for our daughters? Can you wonder that we 
warn and warn again — not that we anticipate 
more war or greater war — no, far from it, 
but no one anticipated this war, no one can tell 
what is ahead. We have lived long enough in 
the paradise of' fools. This is a practical 
world; it is our generation that must fit the 
generation to come for any and all eventuali- 
ties. 



CHAPTER XI 

SPIES 

WE GOT the spy mania badly along in the 
late autumn of 1914. Everybody had it. 
We had the grand old time "spotting" agents of 
Berlin's unspeakable one. The police stations 
were thronged with folk reporting other folk. 
Many of them had good reason, others went in 
good faith, but were victims of an over-stimu- 
lated imagination. Nevertheless, there were 
plenty of spies about and every report was in- 
vestigated. 

Dozens of men were enlisted in the secret 
police. Tommy B., the chief survey engineer 
of one of our electric railroad systems, was one. 
I had the honor and glory of reporting to 
him, one German. We called him "Billy 
Smith," otherwise "Clubticket" for want of 
knowing his name, because he belonged to a 
cycling club and because he looked it ! 

I had no real reason for reporting the man. 
76 



SPIES 77 

I didn't like his looks. I didn't even know his 
business, nor yet that of his brother-in-law at 
whose house he lived. I didn't know the man 
to speak to. He was born in Germany and in 
appearance was slightly "Hun." 

I noticed he took to riding his bicycle to 
town instead of going by train. That might 
have been a very legitimate economy, but the 
real suspicious thing to my mind was his 
mounting a Union Jack on the handle bars. 
As a matter of fact in the early days when 
we saw a flag displayed obviously in a house 
window we decided the occupants were Ger- 
mans camouflaging behind the emblem of loy- 
alty. In many cases we were right. 

At all events, I reported "Clubticket" for 
mounting the flag. A beastly German had no 
right to touch it anyhow. My "hunch" was a 
good one. In a very short time he disappeared 
behind the trellis of an internment camp, 
along with his brother-in-law and his oldest 
nephew, while his sister, two daughters and 
younger boy were deported to der Vaterdand. 
There must have been something, though I had 
never the satisfaction of knowing what. 



78 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

Then there was the case of the Japanese. A 
Japanese went into one of the houses opposite 
to us and never came out. That is absolute 
fact! We saw it happen. The neighboring 
householders saw it happen and a Mrs. C. saw 
it. She was in the Secret Service herself — so 
she said. 

It was one evening. This house had 
changed hands several times, then had been 
rented and though furniture was put in, no 
occupant appeared until the advent of the 
Japanese man. In he went. No mistake 
about that; as light appeared at nights in the 
windows — this was before air raids and light- 
ing regulations — and the milkman left a pint 
of milk each morning — apparently at an 
empty house. We know because he was our 
milkman. The order was given the dairyman 
by post-card and the bill wasn't paid. The 
milkman told us that also. The mystery con- 
tinued. The Japanese would arrive each even- 
ing, go in and never come out! At long last 
a British-looking man also went in one even- 
ing. The plot thickened. He didn't come out. 
We consulted and decided to report. Spies 



SPIES 79 

were a certainty now. Bomb makers maybe 
— we had visions of hidden ammunition, secret 
meetings of Kaiser-hired assassins. It was a 
great time. 

It was the next day that a woman and a 
plump, chubby, fascinating baby boy arrived 
with a plethora of baggage and a go-cart. 

The house had been rented prior to his vaca- 
tion in the country by a respectable Baptist 
minister ! 

He slept at home some nights when he had 
come to town to attend to some church matter, 
and they rented a room to a Japanese student. 
Their milk bill was paid monthly. 

Nothing daunted by this offset we still oc- 
cupied ourselves with spies and spy catching. 
Real, authentic cases were reported fre- 
quently, and more than once we knew of spies 
who were shot in the Tower. At this time the 
Special Constable Service was installed. These 
were men over military age, mostly fifty and 
upward, who attached themselves to the Met- 
ropolitan and Urban District Police ranks. 
They supplied their own uniform, which at 
first consisted of a peaked cap, a waterproof 



80 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

cape and a blue and white striped armlet. In 
addition to their own clothes of course. When 
off duty they had a badge for buttonhole wear 
and in case of emergency could act, even with- 
out the cape, cap and armlet. These men did 
good service and are doing it still. The regu- 
lar police force was sadly depleted by Army 
and Navy Reserve men being called up, and 
the numbers of younger men who would not 
be denied enlistment in the fighting forces. 
The Specials attended to their own business 
affairs and took on so many hours' duty per 
week, or came at a call from headquarters at 
any time. They were excellent spy hunters 
and catchers. 

Mr. A., a fine man of some fifty-nine or sixty 
years of age, was a sergeant of Specials. I 
knew him. After one somewhat fierce Zep- 
pelin raid he told me of a smart capture. He, 
in charge of two constables — also Specials — • 
were on hotel search duty. At this time whole- 
sale internment of enemy aliens had not been 
forced by public opinion and later action; 
hotels were more or less hotbeds of spies. 
There were German waiters sent to such posi- 



SPIES 81 

tions for the purpose of overhearing, possibly, 
conversations at public dinners and so forth 
among high placed personages — conversa- 
tions where a word or two to the understand- 
ing mind, would convey information of infinite 
value to the enemy country. Mr. A., with his 
men, searched a certain hotel at a city ter- 
minal of a railroad. They mounted to the 
roof. Nothing was to be seen. Everything 
was still, dark and to all seeming safe. The 
aircraft was manoeuvering almost overhead, 
but no bombs were dropping at the moment. 
The three men descended again. On the sec- 
ond floor one of them hesitated and stopped. 

"I think we'll go back to the roof, sir," he 
suggested to my friend, "I'm not happy about 
it." 

Back they went. Softly they crept on the 
leads, gently they rounded this chimney and 
that; suddenly they almost stumbled over two 
figures crouched in the shade of a chimney 
side. A huge, motor headlight, fully ablaze, 
lay between the pair and one of them manip- 
ulated it in what was evidently the Morse code, 
while the other scanned the sky and followed 



82 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

the movements of the aircraft with night 
glasses. 

I don't think either of them saw the sun rise. 

We had the hoary tale of "the nun who was 
a man" in England too. It is over in the States 
now. I've only heard two versions here as 
yet. At home we had a dozen, but the favorite 
was where the nun, garbed in the black habit 
of her order, was riding in a motor-bus — quiet, 
unassuming, gentle of manner, sweet of face, 
eyes downcast and hands meekly folded under 
her flowing cuffs. The familiar lady (Mrs. 
Smith's cousin's wife's aunt's sister-in-law) 
sitting opposite, always noticed the size of 
the black boots modestly peeping from under 
her black draperies. They were enormous 
boots. Then the familiar, usual lady as afore- 
said, with suspicions aroused, got up, spoke to 
the conductor; said conductor beckoned a po- 
liceman who mounted the moving bus and 
heard the story. Presumably the spy catchers 
climbed to the top of the bus, otherwise the 
"nun" would surely have overheard. Strange 
to say that same nun never got down before 
the scene was set. The policeman followed her 



SPIES 83 

— I don't know how he left his appointed beat 
— arrested her, impounded her in the gloomy 
barracks. There she was searched and inva- 
riably found to be a man. "Just as I sus- 
pected by the size of the boots," as the lady 
was said to have said ! 

There may have been a spy garbed as nun at 
one time. There might have been two. We 
began to doubt that story after the twelfth 
repetition. Frankly, now I never believe 
"nun" stories. Yet, they may be true; no one 
"outside" can tell. 

Then there were the actual cases of the man 
with the wireless, and the building with the 
supposed gun emplacements. 

The wireless man lived in our own suburb 
and on our own avenue. It was about five 
houses up and next door to Mrs. C. A man 
and woman, apparently husband and wife, oc- 
cupied that house. They kept no servant, 
and any one who noticed them thought them 
rather Bohemian in appearance. Presumably 
they took in the milk and paid the bill. Sandy 
"didn't know as there was aught against 
them," when the story came out. 



84 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

Mrs. C. was at home one late afternoon, alone 
in her house with the windows all open and 
her greenhouse door which led to the garden. 
Suddenly she heard a scream, agonising in in- 
tensity. She went out to investigate and saw 
the woman next door with the fingers of her 
hands pinned under a window which had 
crashed down. Mrs. C. then remembered that 
the man of the house had gone away, maybe 
two weeks after war was declared. She had 
thought nothing of it. Thousands of men 
went away in a night, sometimes to turn up 
again at their homes garbed in khaki, some- 
times only to become the subject of an obitu- 
ary notice in the weekly local news sheet, some- 
times an object of prayer at the Parish 
Church. 

The woman must be alone in her house and 
certainly she was in agony. Mrs. C. climbed 
in the other garden by the dividing fence and 
entered by the kitchen door. She released the 
poor woman, attended to her bruised and lac- 
erated hands, bound them up and gave her a 
stimulant. The woman was half fainting with 
pain and fright, almost she seemed distraught. 



SPIES 85 

"Are you quite alone?" Mrs. C. feared to 
leave her. 

"All alone — except for him upst — " The 
woman straightened up and bit off the sen- 
tence. She paled and looked at Mrs. C. as 
though scared that the latter had noticed her 
broken word. Mrs. C. paid no apparent at- 
tention, but she communicated with the police. 

They found "the man who had gone away" 
closeted in the topmost story. His laboratory 
was excellently equipped, his wireless appara- 
tus in wonderful working order, his codes of 
wonderful value. When he saw his visitors he 
could only mutter — "Gott strafe — Gott 
strafe!" 

That was our closest spy. 

Then the papers came out one morning with 
gigantic head-lines and photographs of a cer- 
tain music publishing house. The plant of 
this firm was erected some few years before 
just by the junction of several important rail- 
road lines. It was a model in every way. The 
name of the firm was German in sound and 
spelling, but that alone should not have con- 
demned them; many an honest, loyal soldier 



86 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

has a Hun-sounding name. Ostensibly to allow 
of further additions the roof of the building 
was flat and of concrete — the head-lines ran : 

MUSIC PRINTING PLANT RAIDED. 

The concrete floors, the concrete roof were 
supposed to be gun emplacements. If so, the 
situation was commanding and excellent. 
There was an uninterrupted view of railway 
track; there were hundreds of trains passing 
and repassing day and night, loaded with 
soldiers, with our available guns, our available 
ammunition and available extra supplies. 

We never heard the end of the story. To 
this day it remains a mystery ; maybe the solu- 
tion is locked in the memory vaults of the 
authorities, whether the plant was a spy nest 
or whether it was not. 

It was after Scarborough that the small 
anti-German riots started. They did not 
amount to much. I wish they had amounted 
to more. The British public do not demon- 
strate easily, even when roused to anger; 
their methods are usually very slow, but in the 
end immensely effective. There was more 




Ivan Douglas Peat 

Her brother-in-law. Enlisted at 16. Wounded three times 
and still carrying on 



SPIES 87 

than one of us who wished there might have 
been greater movement. 

Scarborough is a popular watering place on 
the Yorkshire coast. It is a summer resort, with 
a promenade along the sea front; on the in- 
land side are hotels and boarding-houses. 
There is a castle close by ruined, hoary and 
aged. It might have been occupied three or 
four hundred years ago. Bats flutter under 
the broken archways and birds nest in the ivy. 
It is a grey old place and eerie. 

Without provocation, with no slightest 
warning, the Germans opened fire on Scarbor- 
ough one misty morning in 1915. A brace of 
their destroyers had slipped through the guard 
of British vessels — the North Sea is a pretty 
extensive place — and poured shells on a de- 
fenceless vacation centre. 

"A fortified town — there is a castle there," 
shrieked the German press in acclaim of the 
vasty deed, a few women killed, a few more 
babies and a few less civilian men. That was 
Scarborough ! 

"Remember Scarborough I" rang the huge, 
avenging figure of Britannia on the recruiting 



88 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

poster. "Remember Scarborough!" and men 
flocked to the colors ; but some, with the women 
who could not go, set out to wreck the shops 
of sorbid Germans, fattening on the fat of a 
land they daily betrayed. The riots amounted 
to nothing. There were a few stones thrown 
in windows, a few shops overturned, a few 
Huns scared, a few unoffending folk arrested. 

But it did good. The authorities tightened 
the tethering rope on the enemy alien. There 
was a five-mile limit set on a man's journeying 
from his home unless by police permission 
and the same applied to women. Hotels had 
special registration, aliens could not go within 
certain prescribed areas surrounding ports, 
docks, munition factories, aerodromes and so 
forth. 

Best of all — sorry though I am that my own 
sex needed the restriction — the net was drawn 
close and fast around the woman enemy alien. 
From experience, such women should be given 
no privilege, no greater license, no further im- 
munity than the man of their species. She is 
treacherous, deceptive and can use her sex to 
further the despicable work of her country. 



SPIES 89 

She can worm her way into the confidence of 
too trusting male acquaintances; she can pro- 
fess loyalty to the country of her adoption and 
stab it in the back as she sings the national 
anthem of the nation she hates. She pene- 
trates to Red Cross workrooms and sews seeds 
of horror, pacifism, of carping against the gov- 
ernment, the while she sews stitches and hate 
into the garments she handles. Oh! most 
subtly she works. A word here, another 
there. Her listeners — good, honest, honor- 
able, trusting, unsophisticated housewives, 
"doing their bit," listen and learn. They re- 
peat and repeat again. The story gathers 
force, whatever it be. The harm is done, the 
insidious propaganda propagated and spread. 

Watch your enemy alien friend — watch her 
more closely still if she continually professes 
loyalty. Once a German always a German; 
once a German woman always a German 
woman. 

There may be many who are loyal to the 
flag of the land in which they live ; there may 
be many sincerely working for the soldiers of 
their new home. They must suffer for the 



90 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

suspicion to which the disloyal among them 
.give rise. 

I suspect all without reservation, till I have 
absolute, unquestioned proof that there is no 
room for suspicion. I have seen too much of 
war — four years is a long while — I have 
learned too much of spies; I have known too 
much of the machinations of the woman alien 
enemy. 

To our wounded soldiers in city streets when 
all of us were handing the boys what little 
luxuries we could muster, the enemy alien 
woman was there too. She handed the boys 
drugged cigarettes. When our soldiers came 
in on short leave, the enemy alien woman met 
them at the depots and showered gifts upon 
them, more drugged cigarettes, more poisoned 
candies. They tried to entice the boys to places 
of ill repute and there drag information from 
them which would be useful to the foe. It goes 
for nothing that they met with little success. 

Bah ! We are all suffering in this war. Why 
should we be considerate of the feelings of the 
loyal one or two? 

I suspect them all. 



CHAPTER XII 

WAR BRIDES 

"A^EORGE wants to be married before he 

\j goes — I don't know what to do." A girl 

I knew slightly half sobbed the sentence to me. 

"George wants to be married — what shall I do ?" 

Here was the direct question. I could give 
my opinion, advice even. 

"How long did you say you knew George?" 

"Three years." 

"Well, marry him — get married of course, 
and get married at once, what else would you 
do?" 

"But he has to go in two weeks and he will 
only get two days' leave." 

Exactly ; all the more reason for getting mar- 
ried and getting married right away. 

There are war brides who should be and war 
brides who shouldn't. I'm a war bride myself, 
but one who comes within yet a third category. 

91 



92 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

In the old country we had improvident, hur- 
ried, reckless war marriages. These have made 
for unhappiness, quarrels, sometimes separa- 
tion, sometimes worse. In the old country we 
had war marriages, hurried certainly, but 
blessed with serenity, contentment, gladness, 
though over all there spread the grey mantle of 
heart sorrow. 

A hundred times I have been asked over here 
by girls should they marry ; by mothers should 
they consent ; by men should they ask what the 
majority of them term a sacrifice. 

Marry if you are certain of a grand, a soul- 
inspiring, mutual love. 

No half measures of affection and respect 
will carry you through a war marriage. 

I do not approve of the wedding where the 
parties have only known each other a week, two 
weeks, a month perhaps. They may turn out 
all right. They may not. But if a man and girl 
have known each other a reasonable time, I 
would say marry assuredly. 

For the girl there are many things to con- 
sider. 

Remember you are marrying a soldier or a 



WAR BRIDES 93 

sailor, that being so you are marrying a hero. 
You must be worthy the title "a hero's wife." 
There is no man to-day offering his life in our 
defence who is not a hero. 

Remember you will be separated quickly. Re- 
member you will have been a wife of hours, 
days or weeks. Remember your husband is 
going into danger ; he may come back to you by 
God's good mercy, but it may be willed other- 
wise. 

Remember when you part from him, in the 
hard lonely days which follow, to envelop him 
in thoughts of safety, of courage, of good. Re- 
member you can aid him from afar. Remember 
you have said "till death us do part" — ward off 
death by intensity of love, of prayer, of 
thought. Remember he is your man, yours 
alone to strive for. 

If it should be willed that death parts you, 
then gird on the courage which went with him 
to the Mercy Seat. Take up your burden, take 
up your life and make it worthy, make it worth 
while the sacrifice of the man who gave his life 
for your earthly safety, as your Lord gave His 
for your spiritual salvation. 



94 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

Remember it may be that your man will re- 
turn to you crippled and broken in health. 
Gather together the mother-love of your soul 
and add it to the wife-love of your heart. He is 
your man ; what does the loss of an arm, a leg 
or an eye matter where the loved one breathes 
and speaks? What is blindness itself, if you 
have him near you? You will be strong, you 
will be well, you will be full of a divine given 
power; you can sustain, strengthen and work 
for your mate. 

To us as women has come with war the su- 
preme opportunity of our existence. To show 
ourselves women as women should be ; to prove 
ourselves wholly woman. Woman as she was 
meant to be; woman as she truly is — not the 
hollow, artificial, superficial doll-like flirt which 
the term "so womanlike" conjures up, as 
against the "so womanly" which pictures the 
housewife so short a way removed from house 
slave. 

Woman is now a section of the nation and an 
indispensable section at that. We are a force. 
Not alone a force and power for the reproduc- 
tion of our kind — that is nature's recognition, 



WAR BRIDES 95 

but a force and power in the industrial as well 
as in the fighting world, which is man's recog- 
nition. 

War bride, you must love deeply, wholly, com- 
pletely. Your man may return horrible to see. 
I remember being one Sunday in the gardens 
of Woolwich Hospital. A wounded soldier 
passed by our seat. His face, practically the 
whole left side had been shot away; later, it 
would be rebuilt of course, but then a narrow 
bandage merely hid the gaping hollow where 
cheek and jaw would have been. Part of a 
mouth was visible. It was obvious he could 
not speak ; we could presume him fed by a tube 
in the torn throat. He was watching the en- 
trance gate eagerly. Suddenly a light leapt in 
his eyes, what might have been a smile con- 
torted the already tortured muscles. He was 
something to be glimpsed and shuddered at by 
those who had not seen worse wounds or those 
who did not love. 

His eagerness grew. Then toward .him 
there came a slim, little woman, scarcely in 
height to his shoulder. He put out his great 
brown right hand to clasp hers, but she would 



96 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

have none of it. She raised herself on tiptoe, 
put a hand on each of his shoulders, gently- 
shifted one as he stooped toward her and put 
it back of the mask-like face, then kissed with 
her small, rosy mouth fairly on the blue, drawn 
line which marked what had been his mouth 
above the white of the bandage. He could only 
look his love from blue eyes which so lately had 
seen Death only and now saw only Love. 

I talked with the girl afterward. I do not 
know their name, nor where they lived. Yes; 
she was a war bride. They had been "keeping 
company" some little while. He enlisted, went 
to France, then got a furlough when they mar- 
ried. Three days they lived together and he 
went back. Six months and he had come to her 
again. 

"He's terrible bad to look at," she finished our 
conversation as my car came along the track, 
"but I love him sore." 

We get down to the fundamentals in war. We 
touch rock bottom. We love and we hate. We 
live and we die. 

You may become a war bride and you may 
become a war mother. The glory of it. The 



WAR BRIDES 97 

father of your child a hero — is the mother to be 
less heroic? 

It will be hard, doubly hard. You go down 
through the vale alone ; the light fades and the 
blackness of pain enfolds you, and there is no 
dear voice to comfort nor hand to guide. But 
your man is also facing the vale of death alone, 
and he has none of the joy which is yours. 

Should you be widowed before even your 
baby sees the light, remember the little one is 
his, a last gift to you. Remember you bear his 
name, his honorable name as a soldier or sailor 
hero — the name of a true man. Remember 
your w r ork lies ahead, the inspiration of his sac- 
rifice must give you strength. You must train 
your child — his child — worthily to follow in the 
footsteps of such a sire. It is your inheritance 
of love. 

There is she who refuses to become the bride 
of war. She is fearful, timid, cowardly. She 
thinks unduly of self. In war there is no place 
for self, the ego must merge into the souls of 
the loved ones. 

You do not marry? Your sweetheart goes 
to war — are you going to stay true through the 



98 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

time of separation — years of parting? Re- 
member already four years of war have come 
and gone. 

Are you going to fret and worry and weary 
while he is gone? 

Should he make the supreme sacrifice, do you 
remember you are widowed in heart and in 
soul, but not in fact. To the world you are an 
object of pity — for an hour — as time goes on to 
the world you are nothing at all. A woman left 
behind. 

You do not marry your sweetheart before he 
goes — you have nothing, no memory, no name, 
no child — all of the things which are his to give 
you. You have nothing. 

Think well of the matter, girls. 

And there is the man. He argues it is not 
fair to his fiancee. He may be killed ; he may 
come back crippled and a burden to some one. 
Why not to the wife who has promised to love 
and honor him, to stick by him in sickness or in 
health? 

Man, do you trust so slightly in the love of 
the girl you have chosen, that you doubt her 
fealty should misfortune come your way? 



WAR BRIDES 99 

Man, do you not want to place her on the pin- 
nacle of all womanhood's achievements? Man, 
do you not want to give her whom you love the 
faithful gifts of wifehood, aye, of motherhood 
itself? 

Sweethearts, in a world of war — decide 
for yourselves — think long — think well — love 
greatly. 

There is left the third war bride. She who 
marries the soldier or sailor who is maimed and 
broken and weary; she who marries the man 
who is crippled, who is unfit; she who meets 
him when he is still invalided and helpless. 
There are pitfalls for her. I know. 

Steer clear of pity. Pity, the sage hath it, is 
akin to love. I do not know myself, but beware 
of pity. Pity does not always beget love, some- 
times pity wearies and is tired, love never. 
Your man will suspect you of pity — be jealous 
of it. Be sure of your love and assure him of 
its certainty. 

Remember your man has faced death and 
looked on horrors. He may be morbidly in- 
clined. He may dwell on his own condition ; he 
may be sensitive and shy — even it may be that 



100 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

he will not put to you the eager question, just 
because he doubts himself. He thinks of him- 
self as he was ; he looks in the mirror and in his 
mind's eye glimpses "the other man." 

You must be very sure, girl-woman. You 
must be very tender, very gentle, very patient, 
very helpful — verily, you also must LOVE 
greatly. 



CHAPTER XIII 

PETER GOES WEST 

THE second Sunday in May of 1915 was 
bright and clear and warm, more than 
warm — hot. I remember because although I 
was not working on Sundays then, I went up to 
town that day. 

Telegraph boys always knock, a rapid double, 
in London. That summons came — it could not 
have been more than half past seven — that Sun- 
day morning. 

"Peter," I whispered to myself, as I sprang 
from bed to answer the call. We had not heard 
from Peter since April the twenty-second. The 
fatal day of the second Ypres battle. We knew 
he must have been in it because the newspapers 
blazed with news of the Canadians. Columns 
rang with the stand of the Fighting Tenth in St. 
Julien Wood. How they had fought and battled 
through the night. How they had torn through 
brush and undergrowth tangled with wire ; how 
101 



102 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

they had recaptured the famous 4.7 guns lost 
earlier in the day when the gas had been put 
over. How cooks and transport drivers, 
armourers, blacksmiths and the chaplains even 
had shouldered rifles and fought to a man in the 
desperate aim to keep clear the road to Calais 
and the world free for civilisation. 

We had not troubled very greatly over 
Peter's silence, because men must rest after 
such black work as they had had; besides cas- 
ualty notifications are always sent promptly as 
a rule and we had heard nothing. 

But wires were frequent of late— "Captain 
S. was killed February — ." "Major F. was 
killed January — ." "Private S. was killed 
March — ." We knew what to expect, or so we 
thought. 

I said as I passed my aunt's door. "This is 
Peter now, I suppose." Hugh and Tom were 
still left, but they were in the Imperial forces 
and not in the Ypres scrap just then. 

The wire was about Peter, but from his 
mother. She wanted us to enquire at the Cana- 
dian Record Office. I went that day, but it was 



PETER GOES WEST 103 

Sunday and the offices were closed. I went 
again on Monday morning. 

The Canadian Record and Pay Offices were 
at Millbank. The Record Office itself has been 
moved twice since then. It was on the fourth 
floor of the main building in 1915. I was there 
early in the morning, but I was not first. Girls 
were behind the counter. Women and men 
were seated on chairs round the bare room — 
waiting. 

It was the first time I had made enquiries at 
the Canadian offices. The Imperial War Office 
was familiar — all too familiar ground. I filled 
in the customary blue paper. The girl took it. 
She was tall and good-natured looking. I think 
it was in three minutes that she returned my 
blue sheet to me. I had put Peter's name, rank, 
number, company and battalion in the spaces 
provided ; my own name, address and relation- 
ship ; when we last heard of him and what we 
wanted to know. 

I took the blue sheet up. My hands trembled, 
I went hot all over, then cold. I could hear the 
sob of a little woman who stood beside me ; then 



104 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

she fainted and one of the orderlies lifted her. 
Her husband had been killed. 

"No casualty reported," I read my paper. I 
gasped. Peter was safe. It was all right. I 
sped down the stairs, too excited to wait for the 
elevator. Peter was safe. It was into the third 
week after the glory of Ypres, casualties must 
be through. I got to the telegraph office in Vic- 
toria Street, wired his mother in Suffolk, wired 
our aunts at Bedford Park. I trod on air. Peter 
was safe! No casualty reported. 

A week passed. There was no news of Peter. 
I went to the Record Office again. No news. It 
was a Thursday this time when I went. There 
was a tall, fine-looking man handing in his blue 
sheet. He was upright, his shoulders thrown 
back as only an old army man knows how, prob- 
ably he was sixty ; his white beard was trimmed 
to a nicety ; his immaculate hands were firm as 
he grasped a crooked cane. There was a car- 
nation in his buttonhole — it was a Malmaison. 
He put in his blue sheet almost perfunctorily. 
To me it seemed he had come enquiring to please 
some one, rather than for any anxiety on his 
own part. Maybe his wife had been anxious 



PETER GOES WEST 105 

and he had tolerantly promised to "look in" at 
the Record Office. Certainly, he expected no 
trouble. He was happy in the consciousness of 
everything being all right. 

My paper was whipped away, this time by a 
little dark soldier. He was a French-Canadian 
convalescing. He was back in the blink of an 
eye. 

"No casualty, miss !" He seemed eager to give 
me good news and he spoke before he reached 
the counter. 

"My God !" The exclamation came from my 
white-haired friend. I turned round. I never 
shall forget his eyes — piteous, beaten, sunken 
in their sockets it seemed, they appealed to me 
— because I was nearest him, I suppose — the 
supplication was awful. I could not help. 

"My God— how can I tell his mother?" 

That was all. He tottered. It was no longer 
the firm tread of the old army man ; he reached 
the elevator and was gone. 

"Yes ;" said the French-Canadian as I caught 
his glance, "he has been coming every day — his 
son was a captain — he was killed yesterday — 
the news just came in this morning. He won't 



106 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

have to tell the mother ; she'll have had the offi- 
cial wire since he left home." 

I was crying myself now. 

"Funny," went on the soldier, "funny, but 
mothers seem to take it braver than fathers. 
The men can't cry; they seem to break all up 
sort of. Then the mothers seem to go back 
years in a leap to the boy's baby days. They 
get a lot of comfort out of remembering his first 
word, first smile, first tooth, but the fathers, 
they don't seem to. They shrivel up, seems to 
me — funny !" 

The little soldier turned to another enquirer. 
I wondered. I have thought of his remarks 
since. I wonder do parents not share the baby 
days enough! I wonder does mother get more 
than her share. 

A few days went by and then my letters to 
Peter began to be returned. "Missing" was 
written across the corner. His mother got a 
notice and then she had a kindly letter from the 
senior lieutenant of Peter's company. He was 
the only officer left unhurt or alive of C Com- 
pany. 

The hopeless search commenced then. He 



PETER GOES WEST 107 

might be a prisoner. The Germans were not 
very careful as to the notification of the men 
taken, or as to the promptness with which the 
boys could communicate with their folk. There 
was a chance. Then Peter spoke German; he 
was tall, broad and very fair. We had a mo- 
mentary wild theory that he had penetrated the 
Hun lines and would return after obtaining val- 
uable information. We have much reason to 
thank the Red Cross of Canada, of England 
and in Geneva for the help they gave. We 
have reason to thank Mr. Gerard, perhaps the 
most loved American man in England to-day, 
and help also was given us in searching the 
prison camps of Germany by the organization 
originated by the King of Spain. 

We thought Peter might be wounded and pos- 
sibly cared for by a Belgian peasant. We began 
to search the hospitals. Men were brought in 
sometimes who had lost their identification 
discs and who had lost their memory. That 
might have happened to Peter. I went from bed 
to bed in the wards of the hospitals. We went 
to Convalescent Camps and Homes. Once we 
heard of some one resembling the description, 



108 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

who was insane. How I prayed I would not 
recognise him. It was not Peter. 

Mr. Casson's brother was with the Canadian 
Motor Transport. He took a dozen copies of a 
"missing" notice and pasted them in France as 
he traveled from point to point. They were 
stuck on trees, in canteens, estaminets and all 
likely and unlikely places. Two men wrote in 
reply to these notices. 

Then I advertised. I chose the Daily Ex- 
press, not for any other reason than of the 
(then) halfpenny dailies it was my favorite. 
All the other papers carried Missing notices 
and the Sketch and Mirror printed photo- 
graphs of men who were sought. 

There came many replies, twenty in all. All 
from wounded soldiers, excepting two and those 
men were still in France. It showed the won- 
derful comradeship of the boys one for the 
other; it showed the marvellous refinement of 
spirit which makes men after coming through 
nothing less than a hell of agony, horror and 
torture, to sympathise with others in a sorrow 
and trouble which may be greater than their 
own. 



PETER GOES WEST 109 

None of the letters held out any hope that 
Peter was alive. The supposition was that he 
had been in a trench with two hundred others. 
The trench was mined. There could be no iden- 
tification nor individual burial. Thank God for 
the merciful belief — 

A SOLDIER DOES NOT DIE. 

For months we searched and hoped. We fol- 
lowed up the vaguest clues. A year later the 
official notice reached Peter's mother, his next 
of kin — "Missing April 22, 1915 : now presumed 
dead." 

This official notice allows relatives to ar- 
range the disposal of the soldier's property ; to 
make claim to his personal effects if any have 
been found. To a wife it means she is now, no 
matter how she still may hope, a widow. 

Like Raymond Lodge, Peter has spoken 
through a medium to his Aunt Elizabeth. She 
tells that he speaks of a complete happiness, of 
work in another sphere. For myself, I know 
nothing of such possibilities. I can only give 
the stated facts of those whom it is impossible 
to disbelieve. I hope it is so. I do know that 



110 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

Peter — that none of the soldier lads of the old 
country, or the boys of America who make the 
supreme sacrifice, none are dead. 

Poor old Peter ! Life was a sorry problem to 
him and we helped him worry. Had our faith 
been strong as now, we would have left the solu- 
tion of life in the Hands which know — the 
Hands which helped our boy pass onward — 
upward — a Hero. 



CHAPTER XIV 

PREACHINGS AND PRACTISE 

"•"^AN you give me some help; can you give 
^^ me some advice to help me through this 
war time — this weary time when my boy is 
gone?" 

It was a woman in Indiana who asked me 
that. 

There were several things I could tell her. It 
was not so much advice as hints I could give. 
We who have had years of war do not presume 
to give advice. We retail what we have dis- 
covered, through bitter experience, for our- 
selves. Individually each one has to work out 
her own salvation in these days. 

"Don't worry," I said — "first thing, last 
thing, middle thing, don't worry !" 

"Do you practise what you preach?" My 
friend of a moment had me there. 

No; I certainly do not practise the precept 
perfectly. But I try. It helps, too, quite a bit 
111 



112 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

to tell others of the bad effects of worry, and 
some of the ways in which it is possible to get 
rid of the heaviest end of it. 

Where is your faith if you worry? God's in 
his Heaven and all's right with the world. Do 
you believe? Then — why? Why the doubt and 
why the perplexity? 

There are light worries and heavy ones. 
There are those which appear to be given us, to 
come to us without the asking ; there are those 
we manufacture for home consumption. If 
worries were marketable, there's a many of us 
would be rich. 

With one exception, no two people have 
exactly the same sort of worries. The exception 
is the war. It is a ghastly worry for women. 
We didn't bring it on. Possibly had women 
been conducting the diplomacy of nations, they'd 
be talking yet. I doubt if we'd have patience 
to write notes. We like to thresh things out 
with our tongues. A good "talk" often settles 
many a trouble. 

But the war is here and we have to bear with 
it. We have to bear with the absence of our 
men-folk in the field. We have to bear with the 



PREACHING AND PRACTISE 113 

horror of having them killed. We have to learn 
the tragic relief of a War Office notice 
"wounded." And so we worry. 

It is difficult to stop the continuous dread of 
thought. Yet, we must. It is bad for ourselves, 
it is bad for our dear ones at the front or on 
the seas. How many times do I say that 
thoughts are tangible things. Thoughts are ac- 
tive. Everything had its beginning in thought 
— Facts are materialised thoughts. So, think 
bravely, think cheerfully. Forget the dread. 
Forget the worry. 

Worry is like a drug. It grows upon one. It 
gets to be a habit. It is insidious. It is dan- 
gerous. It is deadly. Worry saps the vitality. 
It eats up Morale. It makes one old, when 
there should be no age. It brings wrinkles; it 
brings gray hairs ; it brings ill-health. Worry 
is an invention of the Evil One; little wonder 
that its seed is being propagated by his viler son 
— the all highest of Germany. 

It may be that by the exigencies of war you 
have to work, to earn your own living, to pro- 
vide for yourself and maybe keep others. You 
worry at the possibility of losing your job? 



114 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

Don't. You are suggesting out-of-workness to 
yourself. Suggestions frequently become reali- 
sations. If you suit your position and your po- 
sition suits you, why worry — why on earth 
worry? Why think about it? Do your best in 
the position you occupy. Strive to do better, 
but don't worry because you do not appear to 
make progress. You will realise all in good 
time. Nothing ever came by worry. 

Everything comes to the woman who waits. 
Surely if you wait long enough and worry hard 
enough you will lose your work. Forget that 
you are employed. Work for the love of work, 
even though war has necessitated it. Forget 
the pay envelope for ten minutes some morning, 
forget the possibility of the dreaded week's 
notice, concentrate on the work in hand and 
note the difference. 

It may be that circumstances arise that your 
position will close. Look out for another. Don't 
despair at one setback. If you do good, effi- 
cient work, you will get something better. 

You may be worrying over the health of a 
relative — over your husband's or your son's 
welfare at the Front or in Camp. Why? What 



PREACHING AND PRACTISE 115 

help will it be for you to worry yourself ill, in 
case something should happen to him? Is there 
reason or sense in making two evils out of a 
problematic one? 

Worry brings nothing good to pass. Never 
did. Never will. 

The war is hard. I am one of many who 
knows just how hard it is. Yet, I preach the 
creed of the brave front. Keep steadily on the 
forward march whether you have any reserves 
to bring up or not. Why, if you forget the 
strain on your resources, forget your problems, 
forget your anxieties for a time, you will find 
on reconsideration that a quarter, maybe a half 
have disappeared. 

Yes; forget everything, at times. I have 
heard criticisms on this side about us of the 
old country going to entertainments, dancing, 
attending theatres. We do it, not because we 
are out for enjoyment only. We do it because 
we must. 

Truly there is little inclination on the part of 
old country women to indulge in "a good time." 
Truly, there are few hours of leisure. But, 
more truly still, moments of relaxation must be 



116 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

taken or the best work can not be given, the 
greatest production in labor can not be upheld. 
Fixed hours of work when possible, and fixed 
hours "off." 

In the trenches the soldiers are "in" four 
days and "out" four days, unless when an ad- 
vance or push hinders the routine. I know of 
a shipyard where fourteen hundred women 
were working. They did the regulation eight- 
hour shift. There was tremendous urgency for 
the particular output on which they worked. 
Yet, by order they took their rest and had their 
playtime. 

I met an American woman the other day. The 
war has got on her nerves already, and on her 
mind. To me it seems terrible since she has 
never been through a raid nor a bombardment, 
and can't have seen any horrible sights of 
wounded. And here is the cause — she never 
relaxes her activities in Red Cross work. She 
goes to the rooms every day and all day, she 
rolls bandages, cuts gauze and packs boxes; at 
home she knits tiny garments for little French 
orphans. She never stops ; never lets up. The 
last time I saw her she wept at every mention 



PREACHING AND PRACTISE 117 

of the war. She has used all her nervous en- 
ergy — she has flayed her feelings to ragged 
nothingness. She is NOT helping on the war, 
although she works and toils and works again. 
She is making a grave mistake. As yet no real 
war trial, no personal war loss has come to her. 
If when it does come, as it seems it must come 
to all, how will she meet it; where is her re- 
serve strength, where is her stored-up nervous 
energy? 

For the sake of your soldier friends relax. 
Go to the theatre once in a while. We do at 
home. Of course we never go without a soldier 
on leave or a wounded man. It is pathetic to 
see their enjoyment; it brings a lump to one's 
throat — but, my! the good it does one. It is an 
inspiration to work harder, to give more, to do 
more, to feel more. 

Always worry, always dwell on the bad side 
of war and you are in excellent trim to hinder 
its progress toward victory. 

I see folks around treading the streets as 
though there were a continuous funeral in the 
family. There is no need of that. More, it is 
wrong, more still, it is wicked. There is no 



118 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

room for depression in the world to-day. Op- 
pression and Liberty are fighting in the ring. 
We women who are spectators of the actual 
combat must cheer on Liberty and cheer the 
harder when an adverse blow gets home. 

In three weeks of war, I have laughed more, 
sorrowed more, developed more, learned more, 
lived more, than in three years of peace. 

Take a good hold on yourselves. Don't worry. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE HUN AS HE IS 

THE German has invented many things, 
more often he has taken the inventions 
of other people and added to them, then claimed 
the entirety. But there is one thing, since civ- 
ilisation dawned, in which he is absolutely first 
and will be last. He is the first in war to kill 
women and children deliberately. He has got 
this new profession down to a fine art. He 
does it with precision and exactitude. It is 
frightf ulness. I have seen him at his work. I 
can speak of twenty-eight separate killings 
which he has done in one evening, in one small 
section within the length of three city blocks. 
That deserves an Iron Cross surely. That, 
without the countless thousands murdered else- 
where, deserves eternal damnation. 

It was a calm September evening. Only just 
such an evening as England can show; just 
such an evening as can be found only in London. 
119 



120 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

A hint of autumn, a higher lift to the high blue 
of the sky, a fleck of white cloud, an aftermath 
of heat, a faint remembrance of a dusty day, 
the dust laid low by a recently passing mist of 
rain. There is a fleck of rust on the tree leaves 
and a rustling as of winter's scythe busy al- 
ready in grim harvesting. 

The long, island twilight still lingered, then 
as suddenly seemed to fall into the blackness of 
night, all the blacker for the absence of the 
usual glare of city lights. London — a city of 
darkness. Unbelievable — unheard of. Black, 
impenetrable, the darker for the bright lights 
we have known. The Strand a dull mystery; 
Piccadilly a darker shadow. There is a faint 
phosphorous gleam like a narrow line by the 
pavement's edge. It worries the pedestrian. 
One has an insane desire to walk on the straight 
edge of it. The same phosphorous gleam 
comes from a band of white round a lamp-post, 
a tree, round the fat outline of a "refuge" pil- 
lar. It is the prepared calcimine which edges 
all pavements and streets in the cities. It keeps 
the foot passengers from straying among the 
traffic. A red eye glares out from the middle 



THE HUN AS HE IS 121 

of the deeper blackness which marks the road- 
way. It is a stable lantern marking a division 
of traffic. 

The night deepens, a star winks impatiently, 
playing bo-peep round the dome of old St. 
PauPs, a pale sickle light marks the slow rising 
of the harvest moon. 

Suddenly, with a sweep of light the heavens 
are blotted out. There is intense blackness 
above and below. Giant candles are swung out- 
ward over the city; they finger the aerial void 
with a creeping, stealthy exactness. They cross 
and recross, form a triangle, then a square, 
flash to north, to south, to east and west. The 
searchlights are ceaselessly busy. Little white 
dots of cloud appear mysteriously, hung mid- 
way as it seems between earth and heaven. They 
dart hither and thither like soapsuds blown, or 
froth from a battling wave before the scudding 
wind. Shaftless searchlights these — going, go- 
ing, endlessly each night policing Heaven's own 
highway. 

A girl stepped back from the balcony of a sev- 
enth floor window of a ten story office building. 
She was alone in the long room. No lights were 



122 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

on and she moved carefully among desks ; found 
her own and sat for a moment in the swing 
chair, while she opened a drawer and bent for- 
ward to get some papers. The clock on the 
desk showed five minutes after nine-thirty. 
The girl stretched herself lazily, gathered up 
some books to add to her papers, and carefully 
as before threaded her way round desks, but 
this time to the entrance door. 

The white face of the synchronised clock set 
with Greenwich time, clicked a minute. It was 
twenty minutes to ten o'clock. The elevator boy, 
exercising up and down the short corridor, 
whistled idly, then wheeled in his tracks. 

"Going down, miss? — Late again!" 

His words were scarcely a question. 

"Last passenger, I suppose." The girl was 
laconic. 

"Last passenger — " 

The elevator gate swung open. The girl 
stepped to the marble of the entrance hall. 

"Good night for Zepps, miss !" 

The entrance hall clock clicked a minute. It 
was nineteen minutes to ten. 

The girl reached the heavy oak doors, now 



THE HUN AS HE IS 123 

latched though still unlocked. The boy secured 
the elevator gate. 

The clock clicked another minute. How time 
goes ! How life passes ! 

The oak door swung slowly open. 

"Boom — whueue-e-e-e- !" 

There was a flash like tropical storm light- 
ning — another thunderous roar, another and 
another. 

The girl cowered back a moment. The boy 
reverted to the natural of his East-end habitat — i 
"Gor blimey!" 

A woman ran screaming by the open door. 
She paused a moment, made a step to enter, 
changed her mind, raced on and rounded the 
corner. Another blast — a stupendous tearing, a 
wrecking, a crash of falling masonry, a grind- 
ing of steel joists on steel. 

"We're hit," whispered the girl, "better make 
for the open!" 

The boy moved with her to the street. An- 
other flash, a boom, a roar. The pavement 
rocked, the roadway opened craterwise, a foun- 
tain of wood blocks, earth, pieces of sewer pip- 
ing, a deluge of water poured upward. There 



124 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

was the smashing of glass, the heavy thud of 
plate windows splitting, falling bodily to the 
asphalt. 

The girl and the small boy clung close in the 
open doorway. 

The synchronised clock clicked jerkily an- 
other minute. It was fifteen minutes before ten 
o'clock. 

A trickle of blood oozed in a lazy stream, 
across the door-step. It thickened, reddened in 
the sudden glare of a searchlight overhead. 
There was a moan, then silence. The girl shud- 
dered, then tiptoed across the stain, drying 
already. She gained the open roadway, the boy 
beside her ; then darted back as a hurtling mass 
of metal and fire swept downward. Another 
and another and another. Two still, huddled, 
ominous forms lay horribly in the archway of 
the building. The stream of blood no longer 
trickled. 

Again the girl and boy gained the entrance 
hall. The clock clicked. It was ten minutes 
before ten o'clock. 

A lifetime had passed. Once more the road- 
way. A motor-bus, laden sparsely, swept round 



THE HUN AS HE IS 125 

the corner, racing death. There was a flash, a 
roar, a shriek. The roadway was empty; scat- 
tered here and there a few bits of humanity and 
broken woodwork, with a twisted, sputtering 
engine. The girl began to run and lost the boy 
in the blackness between flashes. A something 
hurtled past her in the dark. A light flashed. 
The girl ducked, but the round thing only spun 
the quicker — it had a white side to its oval with 
spots of red — the side seemed to grin with a 
hideous mirth. 

The girl laughed and the thing rolled sol- 
emnly on to some waste ground. The girl 
laughed again, then cried. Up the street a little 
way, seated on a taxi-cab was a body, white 
hands gripped the steering wheel with an iron 
clasp, the form sat rigidly. From the neck up 
there was — nothing. 

Another bus went by, skidding from side to 
side to miss the holes in the roadway, a young 
woman sprang toward the step, faltered, fell 
and lay very still. She was dead. Nothing had 
touched her — concussion from the explosion of 
a bomb. 

Great silvery forms loomed overhead now. 



126 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

The girl looked upward. Her hurried run slack- 
ened to a walk, her legs stiffened with the inept 
paralysis of fright. She made no progress. An- 
other bomb fell and crashed, the roadway- 
heaved, split and scattered, fell again. The 
windows of a big hotel shattered to the pave- 
ment; another crash, another and another. A 
theatre door swung open, a mass of people 
jammed in the entrance; they pushed, stum- 
bled, some fell, backward and forward they 
trampled the prone bodies. As suddenly the 
panic ceased and the audience walked out 
quietly. One could hear men whisper im- 
potent, hot curses on the death they could not 
combat. 

The girl now stood, it seemed idly watching 
the fight, the bursting shell high up which was 
the bombardment of the city anti-aircraft guns. 
A fire escape went hooting by ; some Red Cross 
nurses with white dresses spotted with red 
splashes drove up Kingsway in a motor. A 
woman passed wheeling a perambulator, in 
which a six months' old baby lay asleep. 

There was a blinding flash, an explosion; 
there was no knowing from where it came; a 



THE HUN AS HE IS 127 

shower of shrapnel pieces, blunt ends of iron, of 
steel. The woman's hold broke loose from the 
baby carriage handles. She screamed huskily 
as she was whipped up as with a gust of wind 
in March and blown across the street. She 
picked herself up unhurt and rushed back to her 
baby. A man had stopped the perambulator 
before it had gone a yard. He bent over the 
little occupant as the mother reached the side. 
The eyes of the little one were still closed, the 
tiny hand still lay daintily outspread on the cov- 
erlet — a coverlet worked in pink lettering 
"Baby." 

The mother screamed again and raised the 
child. A tiny black scar marred the white — the 
marble white of the smooth little face. The 
mother moaned now. 

"My baby — my only, own wee baby !" 

The baby was dead. 

A sudden cheer rose out of apparent empti- 
ness. The girl looked round, then up. The air- 
craft had gone from view, searchlights played 
unceasingly against the black arch of heaven. 
Another cheer. People were gathering on the 
street now — a London crowd which springs 



128 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

from nowhere. The Hun was vanquished for 

the moment ; he had fled from the wrath of our 

guns. Would that one Hun — just one — had 

dropped among the crowd below. A life for a 

life — and there a baby boy lay dead. 

The girl reached the subway depot. She 

nodded "good night" to the girl collector at the 

barrier, paced the platform impatiently, then 

glanced casually at the synchronised clock. It 

clicked. It was fifteen minutes after ten o'clock. 
* * * 

A crowd of people almost larger than the 
crowds at the Coronation of His Majesty, surged 
up and down the Strand, Aldwych and Kings- 
way as day dawned. More and yet more came 
from the northern suburbs, from the west, 
from the east end. They jostled and whistled 
and whispered and anon grabbed a souvenir 
of shrapnel, even a piece of shattered glass. 

Two women in the press knocked unexpect- 
edly against an abandoned baby carriage. A 
little coverlet, home embroidered, lay half in, 
half out. The girl passed as the woman 
stopped and stared curiously. She gently lifted 



THE HUN AS HE IS 129 

the coverlet and smoothed it over the tumbled 
cushion. "Baby" — the letters were uppermost. 

But there was no baby. 

"Was it — did they — ?" A man questioned 
the girl. 

She nodded and passed on to her office. The 
police would let her in at her own risk. Prob- 
ably the building was unsafe after the bom- 
bardment, it was roped off and guarded. As 
she went on her way she could hear a man's 
muttered comment. 

"Damn them — I'm going to enlist — damn 
them — damn them!" 

Only a Zeppelin raid over London this. Only 
one. Only the something which has happened 
once a week, twice a week, maybe four times 
a week, at times. Only the Hun as he is. Only 
the kultured German people as they are. 



CHAPTER XVI 

IN ON THE GROUND FLOOR 

HERBERT N. CASSON is the man who 
showed me how to enjoy work ; he taught 
me the honor of honest labor, the pleasure of 
accomplishment, the merriment of efficiency. 

Herbert N. Casson is an Efficiency Engineer 
— sometime of the United States, though Ca- 
nadian born, now of London and England and 
France. 

I can hear the inflection, the peculiar intona- 
tion which heralds that word "Efficiency" to- 
day. It is a word upon which the Hun has 
brought opprobrium, but Hun Efficiency and 
Casson Efficiency are two very different things. 

There is the efficiency of aggression and the 
efficiency of progression. I leave it to the Allies 
to decide what nations are the more likely to 
be the exponents of which ! 

I met Mr. Casson in January of 1915, and, to 
my lasting satisfaction, joined his London staff. 
130 



IN ON THE GROUND FLOOR 131 

Efficiency was needed in England not because 
we of the old country are peculiarly stupid, but 
because we are conservative and inclined to be 
"sot in our ways." We have been striving to 
linger under the influences of the Pisces age, 
while our world has travelled onward under 
the sign of man and outpouring — Aquarius. We 
were living with the times, yet encased in a 
shell of our own self-sufficiency, self-content 
and self-confidence. 

We needed a jolt. 

Mentally and spiritually the war has jolted 
us, almost all without exception. Industrially 
and commercially, Efficiency — true Efficiency, 
has jolted many and is steadily jolting more. 

On one Monday of January, 1915, I had the 
hardest piece of work to do that has yet fallen 
to my lot. It was at the Monday Lunch Club, 
then held at the Holborn Restaurant. Mr. Cas- 
son was giving one of his noted half -hour ad- 
dresses. I was to report his speech. H'm. A 
verbatim report — huh! Did you ever try to 
count the bullets one by one as they leave the 
belt of a rapidly fired machine gun — count them 
by sound? Did you? 



132 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

I had never heard H. N. C. speak before, I 
have heard him many times since, yet I have 
never reported him verbatim — I would so much 
like to meet the man who can do so single- 
handed. Yet his every word is clear, his every 
point the perfection of forceful finality, his 
every argument convincing, true and indisputa- 
ble, his every phrase, his every epigram as pen- 
etratingly incisive as the pulsing bullet of the 
rapid gun fire he emulates. 

Those Monday lunches became the bane of my 
life. I had to seat the two to three hundred 
business men who attended. Each man wanted 
a particular seat with his own particular group 
or Mr. Green wanted to sit beside Mr. Brown 
and Mr. Brown did not want to sit beside Mr. 
Green. It was up to me to write the table plan, 
to please all, offend none, and at one time or 
other see that each man got his turn at Mr. 
Casson's table. It was a matter of gymnasti- 
cal etiquette, and left me at my own Monday 
lunch an irritated bundle of wilting nerves. 

The Casson Company which owned the Brit- 
ish sections of the Sheldon School and the Em- 
erson Efficiency in addition to Mr. Casson's own 



IN ON THE GPwOUND FLOOR 133 

methods, was established in 1914 just as war 
broke out, and since then it has trained nine 
thousand individuals. Of these only a thousand 
odd have been women. Women are largely 
learning their efficiency with their trade, and 
some have not completely realised the absolute 
necessity for applied system, for specialisation. 
We are learning. 

Mr. Casson's staff has handled one hundred 
and tweny firms in efficiency work, and he, per- 
sonally, fifty-one. These were mostly factories 
and include such work as increasing the output 
of tanks, of aeroplanes, of engines, of guns, of 
asbestos, of army clothing, of foodstuffs. These 
figures of course are only up to 1918, and are 
increasing daily. 

The Casson firm is "badged." This means 
that each member is entitled to the special war 
work badge of Britain, while the firm ranks as 
"controlled" under the Department of Muni- 
tions. 

The original home of the Casson Efficiency 
was located in Empire House, Kingsway — a new 
building, peculiarly attractive to the Hun air- 
man. We were bombed out on September 13, 



134 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

1915. Later, we were commandeered on two 
occasions. The first time I received the Com- 
mandeering Officer myself, and readily prom- 
ised the little man that we would retreat, bag 
and baggage in the space of a day and a half 
to quarters in the Hotel Cecil. Since then the 
firm has been commandeered from there and 
has a new home in Lincolns Inn Fields, which 
I have never seen. There, too, the Efficiency 
Magazine is published, which is owned and 
edited by Mr. Casson, and managed now by my 
dear friend Amy Naylor. 

In my almost two years' association with Mr. 
Casson's work, my greatest pleasure was the 
"make-up" of the E. M. The long slither of 
scissors up and down a galley proof, the smell 
of damp ink and fresh paste, the cutting of a 
line, the fitting out of a word, the interspersing 
of one of Mr. Casson's epigrammatic "boxes" 
and a splutter of ding-bats. The E. M. was 
like a baby — we tended it and cared for it, hu- 
mored it and played with it. It is grown up 
now, a flourishing magazine and one of worth 
as it always was — of interest to the man and 
woman of business or the man and woman of 




Herbert N. Casson 



IN ON THE GROUND FLOOR 135 

leisure who yet are wishful to make the most 
of life. 

Mr. Casson is now a lecturer of the London 
and Manchester Universities, but his greatest 
work is still a fledgling. He is introducing an 
Efficiency Movement into France — battered 
France — France whose richest of industrial 
centers are paralysed under the claw of the Hun 
eagle, France a country mutile, France whom 
all the Allies love. 

My work on Mr. Casson's staff showed me 
for the first time the infinite possibilities of hu- 
man nature. He himself wrote a book only 
lately and the title is Human Nature, but my 
initiation was not that of the broad thinker or 
the cosmopolitan mind — it was the human na- 
ture of the quite ordinary mind — the humanity 
of the girl worker, the stenographer, the typist, 
the bookkeeper, the telephone girl, the office 
man and the office boy. It was the philosophy 
of the daily round, or the daily grind as this one 
or that might take it. I viewed the ambitions, 
the self-satisfactions and the egoisms of this 
man and that; I saw the emulations and jeal- 
ousies, I saw the old pandering half fear of the 



136 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

ordinary clerk for his employer widen out into 
circles and disappear before the disarming 
frankness, sociability and genuine heartiness 
and good-fellowship of Mr. Casson. At a long 
last, before I left, I could see in the near dis- 
tance the crowning point of perfect team play, 
the secret of all success, evolving from the mass 
of men and women constituting the staff, lift- 
ing them from the days of suspicion, of self- 
seeking, of working for a pay envelope and not 
for work's sake. I had seen all of these bitter 
feelings among the staff of a firm on which I had 
worked formerly. I had seen the havoc it 
played with nerves and the consequent dete- 
rioration in work. There were the "Firm" 
favorites and there were those who strove to 
undermine the favorites. There was all of back- 
biting, of bitterness, of tale-bearing, of insin- 
uation, which was almost lying, and there was 
confusion supreme in the greater portion of the 
work — there was everlasting overtime and con- 
tinuous under-pay. Not till I worked on the 
Casson staff did I understand "Love thy neigh- 
bor as thyself." 

At the Efficiency headquarters I met the girl 



IN ON THE GROUND FLOOR 137 

destined to be my best friend, and a successor 
to my duties, much more able than myself. Amy 
Nay lor. She has rejoiced with me in my hap- 
piness, worried with me in my business trou- 
bles, laughed with me in our many jokes, sym- 
pathised with me in my sorrows, helped me im- 
measurably in a thousand ways. May all such 
happiness which is mine, come also unto her. 

At best of times the work on the Efficiency 
Staff was not wildly exciting, at times it was 
strenuous, once or twice it actually became 
steadily monotonous. More often it was a series 
of small upheavals, some one would come in the 
morning full of being bombed overnight, or 
most sad of all, some one's sweetheart, brother, 
father or cousin would have paid the supreme 
price for Liberty, and we would stand by in 
sympathy only able to watch the girl bravely 
take up the threads of her work which was a 
link in the lengthening chain of Victory. 

I go over and over the pleasant memories of 
Miss Webster, of Miss Ripley, of Pansy West- 
brook, and last but not least, George Furr, the 
then inimitable office boy of the establishment. 
Before the advent of George we had a man, 



138 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

Wheeler, who joined up with a London regi- 
ment and reached France after a few months' 
training. 

Of the male staff there was T. Elson Wil- 
liams, with his son in the front line, there was 
Arthur Dodds, now a wounded officer, there 
was W. W. Attwood, now in King's khaki; 
there was F. C. Harding, not within recruiting 
requirements, and there was Robert E. Mead- 
ows, of the Yorkshire branch, over age him- 
self, but represented in the fighting field by his 
son. I do not remember the names of other 
members of the staff, but they all worked with 
the enthusiasm of Casson inspiration. Whether 
it was the speeding up in making chocolates for 
the soldiers, lemonade for the sailors, or uni- 
forms and gun equipment, there was the same 
team play, the same thought, the same perfec- 
tion of detail, the same concentration, the same 
faith, the same invariable success. 

I have never regretted leaving the Casson 
force, but had circumstances worked otherwise 
I would have chosen to work out my war work, 
which like all others of Britain is to the end, in 
the front line of British Efficiency offensive. 



CHAPTER XVII 

WOMEN — DIGGING 

IT was Mr. Casson who gave me the idea ; at 
least what he said led me to think of our 
work in a different degree. 

We were standing at the seventh floor window 
of Empire House, watching a number of men 
dig a long, deep, mysterious hole in a waste 
piece of ground. It was a gun pit as a matter 
of fact. 

"Yes," said Mr. Casson, "yes, this is a war of 
digging — digging trenches, digging graves." 

"And," I interrupted, "digging foundations." 

Had you thought of it? We women are dig- 
ging foundations. Firm foundations. Solid 
foundations. Foundations of good, prosperous 
trade. Foundations for increased and adequate 
pay to the woman worker. Foundations for 
better work. Foundations of greater and fairer 
profit to the employer and resultantly to our- 
139 



140 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

selves. Foundations of better homes and hap- 
pier lives ; better children and a better nation. 

Women over here, just as they already have 
done in the old country, are stepping into the 
world of work, many of us for the first time. 
We find that men have erected a great struc- 
ture of labor and trade, but there is a crumbling 
at the foundations. They built the towers of 
labor and capital separately and insecurely 
welded them with jealousy, suspicion, envy and 
misunderstanding. This has occurred through 
causes too deep and far-reaching for us to dis- 
cuss. The fact remains, however, and, now as 
we women are starting out in work, we must see 
to it that the foundations of our employment 
are secure. We want to learn that for world 
success Capital and Labor must be one homo- 
geneous whole. We want to know that the Cap- 
ital which makes our employment possible, is 
not wielded by an enemy. We want no misun- 
derstandings, envy, malice or jealousy. We 
want to start fair. 

In the sudden upheaval of life which has hap- 
pened overseas and is happening here now, we 
must, as far as may be, take time to consider. 



WOMEN— DIGGING 141 

We must not rush helter-skelter into any work 
at any salary, on any old basis. If we don't 
care for our own sake, we must care for the 
sake of the boys whose places we are taking. 

When the "Derby" system of "grouping" men 
went into force in England, I found innumer- 
able cases of women whose husbands were to be 
called up, almost in a state of panic. I had 
interviews with several and here is the burden 
of their cry — "I must get work — I must get two 
pounds per week — they must take me without 
experience — they must give me a chance." 

In dealing with cases of this sort, we had to 
analyse the thing. First, we knew only too 
well of the necessity of work. No one knew it 
better. No woman could keep her house on the 
separation allowance of a private soldier; and 
not very many had it supplemented by half pay 
from the husband's firm. But she must get 
work. That was an established fact. 

"I must have two pounds per week." That 
does not appear a monstrous salary in the land 
of good pay, but it was considered quite good 
at home in those days. Ten dollars a week did 
quite a lot. But the government minimum for 



142 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

girl clerks was twenty-five shillings per week, 
which is somewhere around six dollars. 

We had to explain to a woman of this type 
that she must conform to the salary which she 
was worth. No more, no less. She could not 
force employers to give her money out of char- 
ity. Only unjust influence could provide her 
with a salary beyond her deserts. 

"They must take me without experience." In 
some cases they had to. But the married wo- 
man seeking work had to remember it could not 
be obtained by aggression. There were in the 
early days of the war, perhaps two women to 
every vacant job. 

"They must give me a chance." At first they 
did not. There is no altruism about the modern 
employer. He thought of his business first and 
last. If the women's work was likely to prove 
profitable then she got a chance, not otherwise. 
I do not blame him. 

It was plain to be seen how all the trouble 
came about. Foundations were wrongly laid. 
These married women, so hurriedly faced with 
the problem of earning money, were brought up 
short and helpless. Most of them wanted to get 



WOMEN— DIGGING 143 

positions of control or of supervision. They 
failed to recognise that such positions demand 
training, demand to be worked for — worked 
up to. 

We who worked among cases of the sort, 
could not but see that man had made the initial 
mistake. He had failed to let the women of 
this class, for the most part "sheltered" women, 
get an insight into the working world. These 
women had to learn first, and from the first. 
It is very nice to be taken care of; it is much 
nicer to know that one is fit to care for oneself. 

The women of to-day are out in the working 
trenches of life. We are at the front. We are 
under fire. We have got to make ready. We 
are learning the necessity and secret of pre- 
paredness. A number of women are working 
under extreme difficulty, for in addition to pre- 
paring foundations for our future welfare in 
the industrial world, we must earn for imme- 
diate necessities. However, women are among 
nature's chosen architects, we can plan and 
devise and carry out. In the old country there 
will never again be such an undisciplined race 
for a weekly wage. All over the world there 



144 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

should be a combine to force the organisation 
of a Central Control for the allotment of woman 
labour. It should work on broad plans, always 
with the end in view that the right woman shall 
get in the right place ; that the efficient woman 
shall have no limit set to her earning capacity, 
that the ambitious woman shall have no restric- 
tions as to the area of her career. 

This is the age of the pioneer woman. I 
wonder who, in every trade, was the first wo- 
man to exercise each particular calling? For 
generations we have heard of the pioneer wo- 
men who trekked with their men-folk to the 
veldt of Africa, to the rolling downs of Aus- 
tralia, to the prairies of Canada, to Alaska and 
to the far West. We have heard of the woman 
who was the only one of her sex with a white 
skin in many of the farther places of the earth. 
I talked with a woman in British Columbia and 
for three years she had been the only white 
woman in a district of Indians. Think of it. 
She had followed her husband on foot through 
miles of untrodden forest. She had taken up 
her life a hundred miles from anywhere. She 
had ordered her domestic life as best she could, 



WOMEN— DIGGING 145 

with home manufactured cooking utensils and 
the like. She had put up with hardships and 
privations. She had endured hundreds of petty- 
annoyances, which to man appeared trivial, but 
which to a woman were as the pricks of a thou- 
sand sharp needles. Yet that woman was happy 
and content. And why? She had achieved; 
she had accomplished, she had done something 
never done before. She had blazed the trail; 
she had cleared the track, she had done a very- 
great thing;— SHE HAD MADE THE WAY 
EASIER FOR OTHERS TO FOLLOW. 

That is a mighty big thing to do in life. Every 
woman of us who starts something new, no 
matter how hard it be, no matter how near to 
complete discouragement we may come, no mat- 
ter how we may falter and fall, let us keep on 
— keep on, struggle though it be. Remember we 
are blazing the trail. We are pioneer women. 
We are making an easier road for her who fol- 
lows. 

It is a big and honorable position, this of 
pioneering. It is ours to-day, here and in the 
old land, and it is the war which has given us 
this tremendous opportunity. Who was the 



146 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

first woman to clean the first window in a paid 
— shall I say in an official capacity? Who wore 
the first uniform? Who was the first woman 
to clip the first ticket and pouch the first penny 
on a motor-bus route? 

Who was the first woman to trundle a milk 
cart? Who was she who conducted the railroad 
train first, who was the first signalwoman, and 
what woman dropped the first shell into a shap- 
ing machine? Who pulled the first glowing 
band of copper from a fiery furnace? Who 
was the first woman to put the first stitch in 
the first aeroplane wing after the war com- 
menced ? 

The first to do anything! How difficult it 
seems on the way to the goal! How terrible 
appears the anticipation! How wonderful it 
is to the onlooker! How simple in the accom- 
plishment. 

The true pioneer woman must have a deep 
sympathy. She must have a memory which 
holds the thought of all difficulties, but a mem- 
ory which has no bitterness. Her memory must 
be of overcomings and conquerings. And this 
for the sake of the woman coming behind. 



WOMEN— DIGGING 147 

There is no room for impatience, my pioneer 
friend. Remember those who follow must neces- 
sarily be slower than ourselves. If they were 
not slower they would also have taken the lead. 
The woman who leads has always the greater 
cleverness. She has always the greater initia- 
tive. Just as the painter who creates a master- 
piece from the imaginings of his own brain is 
greater than he who copies a piece of still life, 
so is the woman who creates a road for herself 
greater than she who treads the beaten path. 

We must sympathise with our slower sister — 
come back a few steps even, if we believe that 
it will hasten her on her way. It is a trial- 
some, wearisome way to us, but how much more 
so for her. We have all the mystery of the un- 
known to unravel. We have the unexpected to 
meet at every turn. We have the novelty of 
something fresh round every corner. Be pa- 
tient if our followers weary somewhat. 

And to those who follow, there is no room 
for discouragement. We can not all be pio- 
neers. There are not enough new ways for all. 
Blazing the trail is not the prize for every one. 
But follow the track in the very best way pos- 



148 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

sible ; a record can always be beaten. One can 
always reach the goal faster than the traveller 
immediately ahead. There are, perhaps, a hun- 
dred ways of pioneering. 

You women who follow, do not follow blindly. 
Keep your eyes wide open. Something may 
have escaped the notice of the pioneer. There 
may be a shorter cut to the ultimate end of 
success. There may be a bridge built across a 
stream where hitherto there have been only 
stepping-stones — or even where the stream was 
forded in pioneer times. 

No matter whether we follow or whether we 
go on first, there are opportunities to make 
things easier for the next one after. Surely, it 
is a mission in life for us women. Surely, it is 
a duty from woman to woman that we smooth 
the path of life for each other. Life is hard at 
any time. Life, with three-quarters of the world 
in chaos, is doubly hard — it is four times as 
hard to women. 

Now is the golden opportunity to get rid of 
all thorns of jealousy; to smooth out wrinkles 
and push aside stones on the trail of earth's 



WOMEN— DIGGING 149 

passing. We can all be pioneers in this. There 
is no trodden way for those who would do good. 

If you can not, by some untoward circum- 
stance, become a pioneer of work — a pioneer in 
a trade, or in a profession — for the love of hu- 
manity — for the love of the feminine world, be 
a pioneer on the road of happiness. 

Scatter a blaze of joy along the trail. There 
is some woman, somewhere, struggling in the 
dark places. Turn your lantern of kindness, 
hope and faith upon her path and guide her 
where the thorns stab less cruelly; lead her 
where the flints are smoothest. 

Dig on — you women who are building foun- 
dations. We have a great and glorious aim. 
Lead on, pioneer women — in this hour of the 
world's need, we must not — dare not fail. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

ZEPPELIN NIGHTS 

WHEN Brother Boche came to town we 
used him very much as a calendar. As 
there was a woman in Monaghan who used to 
calculate from the day "the brown bear came 
to town." Not to mention old Jimmy McGurk 
of Aughnagurgan who dated everything from 
the night of the "big wind." 

So, in 1915-16, we dated pretty much in the 
same way. "The night of the raid when they 
hit the Strand" — "the night when they neared 
the Great Eastern Station" — and many a funny 
circumstance we noted. 

Zepps are not all tragedy, all horror, nor yet 
all fear. Fear is the least part, there is many 
a good laugh to be got from a Zepp raid. We've 
had a plenty. 

The first night the Zepps came over Bedford 
Park we had the greatest fun and excitement. 
150 



ZEPPELIN NIGHTS 151 

We honestly did not realise the danger. We 
heard the guns round nine o'clock, we did not 
take much notice because they were faint and 
distant sounding, but when they grew louder 
I got that sudden, curious little drop to the 
heart that an air attack invariably gives me. 

"Begorra ! they're over us !" 

There came a tremendous crash. We rushed 
up-stairs. It was the only place to go for a 
decent view. The railway station of Turnham 
Green District Railway was right back of us. 
We knew Brother Boche would make for that, 
there were munition factories at Acton and then 
the White City had troops billetted in it at that 
time. All these places were fairly close. In 
manoeuvring over them friend Fritz would be 
sure to come into good view of our back win- 
dows. We tripped each other panting up the 
stairs. I tried the "return" room first on the 
second floor with Evie. 

"Come on up here!" It was Marion calling. 
We fairly cantered up the next flight. Evie 
went ahead to the other rooms on the third 
floor, but I stopped at the landing window 
where Maggie already had her body half-way 



152 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

out. It was a little window and swung open 
inward. 

"Come on ! come on, quick ! — quick !" 

Man, the excitement in our voices — the hurry, 
the tension. What if we should miss them ! No 
thought of fear entered our heads. Curiosity 
pure and simple was our motive power. 

"Here! here! look — you can squeeze out!" 
Maggie made what room she could for me. I 
leaned out farther and farther. I balanced on 
the ledge with one toe keeping me anchored to 
the stairhead. 

"Glory be! Look!" The searchlights were 
flashing a thousand ways at once. They con- 
centrated on the Hammersmith side. Bang, 
bang ! There came a flash downward — a bomb ! 
Another, another and another. It was great. 
They tumbled like huge fiery rain drops from 
what seemed an empty sky. 

Boom — boom — boom — flash after flash, a 
myriad giant crackers burst high among the 
few woolly clouds lazily crossing the wide dark 
sea of the night sky. 

"Look — look, there it is — there they are — two 
of them — three of them !" 



ZEPPELIN NIGHTS 153 

Our voices cracked with excitement. 

There sailed gracefully, superbly into sight, 
the Zepps. Monster implements of sudden 
death. We forgot that. There was the beauty 
of them. 

Flash — bang! They were dropping more 
bombs. Swizz — boom! Our guns were after 
them. We had a glorious view. 

"Go on — he's got it — he's got it — he's hit it." 
Our voices rose to a shriek as one of our gunners 
made magnificent play. 

"No — oh — bother — he's missed it — got it — 
yes, begum ! No ; it's gone — what a pity !" 

The gigantic silvery oblong rose almost on 
end, higher and higher. The others disappeared 
behind clouds of white — it was smoke which 
they themselves had put out. 

"Oh, they're gone !" We were positively and 
genuinely disappointed. Danger? We hadn't 
thought of it. We had only one thought, that 
our guns would "get one." Only to see a Zepp 
falling — . 

"No, no — it's not gone — here it comes ! Ah ! 
Ye-oh ! Look ! Oh, it's coming over us !" 

There was a blinding flash, a boom which 



154 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

shook the houses. We involuntarily ducked. The 
thing came closer — it looked to be straight over- 
head. There was another flash. Maggie and I 
made a concerted, unpremeditated, very natural 
back movement to get in through the window. 

We stuck. 

There was no going forward — no going back. 
Boom! Bang! I looked up. The Zepp was 
overhead. One mighty heave, one mighty rend- 
ing tug. We were in — we clung to the stair rail 
and laughed, laughed loud and long. The Zepp 
sailed swiftly to the northward. The guns died 
away in the distance. The explosions grew 
fainter. We had been through our first attack 
from hustling Heinie. 

There was one of us — for purposes of the 
higher diplomacy I name no names — who 
thought out a scheme of protection in case of 
another raid. The other raid came, in the season 
they come with more than fair regularity. She 
tried her plan. The idea was to cover the head, 
flying pieces of bomb or shrapnel would not 
then do such vital damage. It was a forerunner 
of a trench helmet, our boys had not yet worn 
those upturned dishpans of later days. 



ZEPPELIN NIGHTS 155 

As a matter of fact it was a biscuit (cracker) 
tin, perforated with holes for ventilation and 
at the moment of danger put on the head. 

She prepared the "armour" and waited for 
an alarm. She popped on the helmet and 
promptly became a very literal square-head. It 
was not comfortable, besides she could not see 
any of the fun of the air fight. She sought to 
remove the armourplated head-gear. It stuck — 
stuck tight. Muffled cries came to us for help. 
We left our vantage points of sight seeing. 

Allons — to the rescue ! 

The tin hat would not move. We laughed. 
It tilted to one side and caught. The guns 
banged and the roar of an aircraft engine 
filled the air. We tugged and pulled, then sat 
down and laughed again. 

It was hot inside the tin hat. The voice from 
within became faint and gurgly. Another boom 
and bang. We were missing all the fireworks. 
We had another try — "Whiff — bang !" off came 
the biscuit tin and the exhausted warrior waxed 
wrath. Our laughter and delay had made her 
miss the best of the gunners' markmanship. 
That night they brought down a Zepp in the 



156 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

Thames. It was towed up the river afterward 
— a wrecked carcase of destruction. 

I think Mrs. Garibaldi suffered most from 
nervous strain. Mrs. G. despite her name was 
not Italian, and he himself had been dead this 
many a year. She's had two "chanstses" since 
anyhow. Allowing a year of mourning widow- 
hood and a "chanst" a year thereafter, it was 
three years "come June" that " 'e 'ad 'ooked 
it." 

Mrs. Garibaldi cleaned offices. She wielded 
a strong right arm and a voluble tongue. I 
know every ailment that ever attacked "my 
Lily." Lily was a pretty fair haired little child. 
Mrs. Garibaldi lived Westminster direction and 
Brother Boche loves the environment of old 
and historic buildings. Mrs. G. dreaded Brother 
Boche. When the guns sounded she bundled 
"my Lily" in a blanket, enveloped herself in a 
shawl, caught up her "joolry" in the one unoc- 
cupied hand and hurried to the Tube station. 
Once there she invariably boarded a train and 
travelled for safety's sake till the "all clear" 
was given. 

There had been two weeks free of any raids — 



ZEPPELIN NIGHTS 157 

weather not favorable to the Hun. Disaster had 
overtaken several Zepps and planes too — but 
there had been alarms in plenty. Certainly 
some attempts to reach the city had been made. 

Mrs. Garibaldi was talking to me one morn- 
ing. She was never quite "thro* " when I 
reached the main offices in the morning. 

"I'm just that tired, miss! I'm fair fit to 
drop. What with raids and a touch of the 
'flenza I'm near done. Aye, h'up every night I 
am — h'up every blessed night — down the Tube 
— h'up again, night in, night out. Guns goin' 
and not knowin' what minute you'll be a dead 
woman. As my late 'usbing 'as said — 'Damn 
them militaries.' " 

"Mrs. Garibaldi, why go in the Tube every 
night? There have only been alarms, no raids 
for two weeks — there's no need to break your 
rest." 

Mrs. Garibaldi turned away disgustedly. I 
was assuredly an unsympathetic boor — . 

"Well, my Lily loves them rides!" said she, 
and flounced out of the swing doors with a 
flourish of her O'Cedar mop. 

"Them rides — " Sure enough raid trips were 



158 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

free ; at least friend Fritz was missing his goal 
of f rightfulness in one small child's heart. 

It was in Empire House, too, that I had the 
window blind bother. Only our big Lecture 
Hall was used at night and only those windows 
had to be darkened. As the length of one side 
was practically all glass, conforming to dark- 
ening rules was no joke. 

On one certain back window a blind was an 
impossibility. The window faced a corner wall 
fashioned of white tiles; the faintest light re- 
flected on the wall and that again to the street. 
A straight and subtle guide-post for Heinie 
soaring heavenward. 

"The copper," otherwise "shiney-bloke" ac- 
cording to Mrs. Garibaldi, officially the police 
constable of the beat, came to me twice. He was 
very decent. There was a fifty-pound (two 
hundred and fifty dollars) fine attached to a 
non-compliance with the act. Ours was not 
non-compliance, but sheer inability to get blinds 
to darken the wretched thing. 

It was George Furr, our office boy, who orig- 
inated the successful idea. 

"Get some blue, miss, like mother uses in the 



ZEPPELIN NIGHTS 159 

wash and mix a paste with whitening (calci- 
mine) and paint the window." 

"Good idea, George — get it." 

George fetched in the appliances. He seemed 
positively eager, but George though fifteen, over 
school age and a meticulous clerk, was very 
much of a boy after all. The blue pudding was 
in nature of a mud pie. 

We mixed it, and with much labor and a large 
paint brush applied it to the glass. It served 
the required purpose. That same evening, Sep- 
tember 13th, 1915, a tremendous air raid came 
over the central London districts. Every win- 
dow in Empire House was broken with the ex- 
ception of the one plastered with blue. 

I wrote the news to Jack Vowel. He replied 
that a bunch of the boys were coming over to 
get "blued," and so become bombproof. The 
breaking of these windows seemed somewhat 
unusual to me anyhow. They were not smashed 
as one would expect, but — being long French 
windows reaching from ceiling to the verandah 
levels, they were split in long thin sections, ab- 
solutely straight, of about half an inch in width. 
The windows were somewhat of a joke — we 



160 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

could not get new ones in for some weeks, and 
the reason? Well, glass such as the plate used 
was made in Austria! We were at war with 
that country. 

If unexpectedly overtaken by a hostile air 
raid, and if no shelter is available, lie down flat 
on the road. That is official. There is much 
less liability of being hit when lying than there 
is when standing — also if you see a shell com- 
ing, go towards it! It is safer always pre- 
supposing that you will remember the rules and 
regulations when under fire ! 

I never lay down myself, having a healthy 
regard for my clothes and a sporting sense of 
taking a chance on being hit, but I saw a police- 
man do it. He was a "dug-out" on point duty. 
A "dug-out" in Army, Navy or Constabulary 
is he who has honorably done his years of duty 
and returned, only in the stress of to-day to be 
called once more to active service. 

My dug-out friend had gained a little, even a 
generous little, embonpoint during retirement. 
He directed traffic with magisterial solemnity; 
his white gloved hands rose and fell with au- 
thority. 



ZEPPELIN NIGHTS 161 

It was a May day and had rained. The street, 
not yet cleaned since the shower, was a mixture 
of oil and dust and water. An aeroplane buzzed 
overhead, another and yet another. 

"A raid!" shouted some one. Every one 
craned upward to see what could be seen. All 
except one. Friend Robert represented the Law, 
the Law was "Lor" to him. "If no shelter with- 
in immediate reach, lie down." He lay down. 

Then some one, well informed, shouted that 
they were our own planes. They circled out of 
sight. We set about our business and Robert 
rose up. We roared. Nice clean face, well 
muddied gloves that had once been white, a 
"corporation" dappled with oil and dust and 
water. It was the Law. Robert resumed the 
direction of traffic with the profoundness of a 
criminal judge. 

What to do in the way of rescuing valuables 
in case of a raid was a point. The house might 
be hit and yet there might be a chance of escape. 
The house might be set on fire by an incendiary 
bomb. There were a half dozen things could 
happen and still the inhabitants be saved. What 
of our money, our jewelry, our papers? 



162 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

We packed them — packed them securely in 
a dressing-case or small bag, and left them 
within arm's reach of the bedside. It was a 
good plan, but I often wonder if the house had 
been hit, would we have remembered the val- 
uables. 

Raid dressing was another problem. Sights 
of unbelievable comicality greeted us many an 
evening when we went outside to watch the gun 
flashes. There were an old couple who lived 
not far from us. I saw them on the street one 
night on my way home. The gun display was 
magnificent. There was no danger as the affair 
was at the other side of the city. Old father 
B. had apparently rushed from bed in some- 
what of a panic. He was arrayed in a night- 
shirt, a tasseled nightcap and round his ample 
shoulders a toga-like flapping garment, which 
resolved itself into the red parlor table cover, 
as a searchlight sent the avenue into sudden 
brilliance. Ma B. had secured a starched lace 
curtain. It draped her attenuated form and 
trailed on the garden path from which vantage 
point she scanned the horizon. 

But apart from the ridiculous, stores actually 



ZEPPELIN NIGHTS 163 

advertised "Zeppelin robes, Aeroplane Caps" 
and so forth. Very dainty and fascinating, 
but not much protection withal on a wet night, 
with bombs falling alternately with rain drops. 

"Go down to the cellar," said Chrissie Bell to 
me the morning after a bad raid. "Did I go 
down to the cellar ? No — I'd rather face a dozen 
Zeppelins than one black beetle and our cellar's 
full of them." 

Voila! the logic of the feminine Britisher! 



CHAPTER XIX 
SOME OF THE BOYS 

THE first letter to come in response to an 
Express advertisement was from a sol- 
dier called Peat. He gets a chapter to himself. 
He rose in importance as time went on.* 

The second letter was from Sam J. Peters. 
As Mrs. Malaprop might say, this was very 
"coincident." The advertisement was for Peter 
— the first letter from Peat, and the second let- 
ter from Peters. 

Sam J. was an Englishman, although he had 
made his home in Canada and had enlisted in 
the First C. E. F. He was badly smashed up 
in the second Ypres scrap, but nothing to his 
condition after Loos — I think it was. 

He was in the American Hospital at Ply- 
mouth, and later graduated to a Convalescent 
Home. To my astonishment one day he walked 



*See page 236. 

164 



SOME OF THE BOYS 165 

into the Efficiency Offices at Empire House. He 
was in hospital blues and leaned heavily on a 
stick. His wound was in his leg. 

Peters thought he had known Peter, and I 
took him home in a taxi — he could not have 
negotiated a train or bus — to see if he could 
identify a photograph. He did the moment he 
saw the group of soldiers, but told us Peter had 
looked much stouter when he had seen him. 
That was reasonable enough as many of the 
boys put on flesh when in the trenches. Sam J. 
recollected that he had lost his own company, 
the Second, but had found them again. He told 
us a bunch of the Tenth were in the trench. He 
was wounded while crawling back, and among 
those who helped drag him in was Peter. The 
boys had called him Pete, and more, it seemed 
he had shared his emergency ration and his 
cigarettes with Peters — Sam J. and others. 

Sam J. disappeared from our ken for quite a 
time. Then he turned up unexpectedly on an- 
other day. He had been to France, got wounded 
a second time and then was convalescing at the 
Camp at Orpington. It was a bad smash, this 
second one, coupled with rheumatism it made 



166 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

him a sad case, yet he expected to go to the 
front yet again. As a civilian Peters was an 
electrical engineer, but like many others he 
had given his business up to take part in this 
scrap of scraps. 

Lance-Corporal Carey wrote, too, in answer 
to the Express advertisement He was in a 
southern hospital, but went later to his home 
town in the north of England. He apparently 
knew Peter well. His letter was short, concise, 
soldier-like — "Pete Watson went out on the 
night of April twenty-second and never came 
back." 

An epitaph perhaps. 

Armourer Sergeant Billings was Peter's im- 
mediate senior. Like Peter he knew all sides of 
army life, for he had been in the Regulars, a 
captain in the Dorsets, I believe, and had gone 
to Canada to hunt fortune and adventure just as 
had Peter when he left the service as a lieu- 
tenant in the Suffolks. 

Stanley Billings got his Canadian adventures 
by playing the role of a trapper. For weeks and 
months and even years at a time he roamed the 
wilds setting his traps on his regular beat which 



SOME OF THE BOYS 167 

he had marked as his own, then visiting the 
caches every now and then. Tall, with fair 
good looks, he was the type one could easily 
imagine wrapped in a mackinaw and warm fur 
cap with ear flaps down, gliding with snowshoes 
strapped to mocassined feet over the vast, cold 
wildernesses of the far Northwest, content to be 
companionless, yet loving company when nature 
palled. 

Billings spent a Sunday with us in July. We 
had several letters from him, but his address 
was mislaid and since leaving the old country 
we have lost all trace. I am sorry. It was he 
who told of the Boche treachery toward the 
Tenth. Some of the enemy had secured British 
uniforms, they dressed in them — kept at a safe 
distance from the soldiers, but yelled in perfect 
English — "Come on, the Tenth — come on !" The 
boys answered the call which apparently came 
from an officer of their own, went forward only 
to reach a trench carefully mined and timed to 
explode the moment they got to it. And yet 
people preach that there be not bitter feeling 
held toward the German. 

The last to write was our now veiy good 



168 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

friend George A. Vowel. Corporal Vowel is 
known among his comrades as "Black Jack." 
He is a native American, from Texas, was hold- 
ing down a homestead at Hanna, Alberta, when 
war broke out and he there and then enlisted 
with the famous Tenth. 

Jack was a machine gunner and distinguished 
himself early in 1917 when he held back, man- 
ning his gun single-handed, an attack of a Ger- 
man company. For this Jack was awarded the 
Military Medal. He is the only soldier I know 
who has been in the scrap since August of 1914 
and who has not been wounded, although he 
has been in every fight with the Tenth and later 
with the Thirteenth Battalion. But he has been 
in hospital twice — once with mumps and once 
with measles. 

It was Jack who in one of his letters, spoke of 
a reunion which was held by all who remained 
of the original Tenth. This was in April of 
'16. There were then thirty-two of the men 
alive in France. To-day, if there are three 
others besides Jack, I am surprised. 

Jack came to see us on his leave of 1915. It 
was in November and he and young Art Chis- 




Black Jack 



SOME OF THE BOYS 169 

holm did London during their eight days from 
the front. The men of the British Army get 
these eight days once a year, if they are lucky — 
and those who live in Ireland or Scotland are 
allowed extra traveling time. 

Young Chis was twenty and already had 
spent two birthdays in the trenches. He was 
an ingenuous lad, and came from Vancouver. 
Originally he had fought with the Seventh and 
later was transferred in a draft. 

We hope and pray that Black Jack will have 
the honor and glory of being one of the originals 
to march triumphantly through Berlin. We 
hope and pray that it will not be long before we 
can welcome him home to the country of his 
birth. There is a something which we who 
have been in the fight for long must bear — just 
an added little cross. We must see new troops 
gain the summit of victory — we must see new 
troops in the high lights of triumph — now when 
the enemy is weaker, when the Allies are 
stronger — we shall see men who did not go early 
march in the glory of success through the home 
streets — and we shall remember our own lost 
boys. Our boys who went out when the weight 



170 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

was all against us — our boys who stood in water 
and mud and blood for weeks on end because 
there were no others to relieve them — our boys 
who died — who passed on long since. Only the 
glory of memory is theirs — I would plead with 
you of the Allies, new and old — do not forget 
them. It was they who saved you. The boys 
to-day, no less brave, yet are but completing a 
victory already begun. 

Jack Vowel's letters are in themselves an epit- 
ome of the war. He has a power of description, 
a sense of contrast and a sense of humor, rarely 
combined. For such as he — and for the brave 
boys who are going daily now, there is not much 
that we can do — a prayer, a thought, a cherry 
note, a small something to show that they are 
not forgotten — that we are grateful. 



CHAPTER XX 

SILHOUETTES OF WAR 

IT was London on an April day of 1916 — won- 
derful, soul-stirring old St. Paul's seemed to 
raise its stately dome with yet greater grace, 
more distinction, a something of pride when 
the nation wept for the passing, sang praise 
for the heroism and prayed for the restful eter- 
nity of the boys who had given their lives for 
others — a service in memory of Canadians 
fallen at Ypres a year agone. 

The day was muggily warm. There was a 
steady, drizzling down-pour of fine rain ; gloom 
and murk of weather seemed the only stage set- 
ting to a pageant of sorrow. 

The crowds gathered early, sombre crowds; 
people whose faces carried the mark of sac- 
rifice. We pushed our way among the throng. 
We had set the nave itself as our objective. 

The crowd seethed on the steps of the cathe- 
dral. Suddenly there was a movement, a mur- 
171 



172 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

mur, no more, it announced the coming of some 
one of importance — "Kitchener" half a dozen 
voices exclaimed. The tall, military figure 
passed silently with bowed head up the wide 
stone steps. Only once more did I see him be- 
fore his tragic drowning, and that on the steps 
of the War Office with General Joffre. 

Another murmur, longer, more intense. It 
swelled, died, then swelled again, yet never to 
a cheer. "How sad they look !" 

It was their Majesties, the Queen in black, 
the King with the mourning band of crepe 
around his khaki uniformed arm. They passed 
with lowered heads into the cool shadow of St. 
Paul's. 

There came the rustling as of autumn leaves 
as the congregation seated itself, then rose again 
as the organ pealed out till the Funeral March 
of Chopin echoed lingeringly upward to the 
dome. The clergy entered and the service 
began. 

A service of memory this for the fallen sons 
of Canada, the gallant daughter of a mighty 
mother. Canada who has given of the richness 
of her wealth in coin and men. Canada, who 



SILHOUETTES OF WAR 173 

like India, Australia, South Africa and the de- 
pendencies, had gained a record unparalleled 
for superbness of sacrifice. 

A prayer mounted heavenward, then boys' 
voices like the voices from an angel chorus, rose 
and swelled. The Archbishop in tones clear, yet 
faltering at times, spoke words of courage, 
words of hope, words of cheer. A sob gathered 
in volume, then hushed its sound. To the right 
a King was weeping, a King mourning the men 
whose loyalty to the Empire had meant death. 
A King wept — a King who is a man as they, 
loved by all, sacrificing, giving. 

The clergyman's voice came louder, firmer — 
it was the end of his address : 

"On Fame's eternal camping ground 

Their silent tents are spread, 
And Glory guards with solemn round 
The bivouac of the dead." 

There was silence. A woman moaned softly. 
Then slowly, magnificently, there rose to Heaven 
peal on peal, the call of "The Last Post." A 
hundred silver trumpets spoke, and the golden 



174 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

dome of St. Paul's echoed and re-echoed till 

hearts lifted, till eyes brightened, till souls sang 

in the joyousness of the new life triumphant — 

the mighty epitaph of heroes passing upward. 

Our boys were not dead — our boys were but 

lent to God. 

* * * * 

London again, the Strand now and noon of 
any day. Typists, clerks, business people of 
both sexes, of all trades are hurrying through 
the luncheon hour. Lyons', the A. B. C, the 
Corner House, all are crowded — sometimes I 
am homesick for the sights and sounds of the 
Strand at noon. 

There is a stir of traffic in the station yard 
of Charing Cross, that golden gateway to the 
Continent. That dull, tarnished, awful entrance 
to the home of death — the Western Front. That 
wonderful, soul inspiring, panic strewn exit to 
Blighty, to hospital, to life ! 

The policeman stops all passage way to ve- 
hicles or foot travellers. A crowd, as all Lon- 
don crowds, springs from nowhere. A cosmo- 
politan crowd this — a Belgian refugee, a Hindoo 
in a white turban, an Effendi in the green tur- 



SILHOUETTES OF WAR 175 

ban of the faithful. A city man "over-age" in 
broadcloth and silk topper; a tattered newsboy, 
a gutter merchant dancing up and down a 
weird, furry animal. Just across an Italian of- 
ficer, a sailor by the railings, a Japanese he; 
a Serbian soldier, an Italian, a French poUu. 
A hundred of others. Black garbed women in 
silks, and flower sellers, right in the front row 
there. See them? Big white aprons, black 
straw sailor hats. But see the foremost one—* 
on her head a man's checked tweed cap — 
" 'Twas his before he 'listed. He's a sergeant 
now. He's got the D. C. M. Look ! I got a let- 
ter from the Colonel." 

She dives into her gown for a much worn let- 
ter. I have read it twice before, but the news is 
never stale. Mrs. Anderson knows my men 
were there, and she knows I understand. She 
understands too. She is one of the great British 
sisterhood. 

But hush! I strain on tiptoe — dead silence. 
An ambulance goes by, on it an orderly sits with 
uplifted hand, a nurse inside. No noise. The 
cases are too serious for a sounded welcomed 
Some one sobs — some one whose boy did not 



176 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

even get the chance of being wounded. Poor 
lads! 

A sudden murmur. Two officers with cushy- 
head wounds. Give them a cheer, folks. Wo- 
men, do I see you turning away at sight of a 
blood-stained bandage? It's war time. You've 
seen worse. Throw them a flower. 

There is a wild whirl of crimson roses, a 
shower of pink carnations. A big car passes. 
Weary Tommies lie back too spent to smile, but 
wait a moment. A splash of blue and a heap 
of forget-me-nots land on the rug which covers 
the boys' knees. One leans forward. What is 
that expression on his face? Pain, surprise, 
wonderment? That curious, deep, questioning 
look of all wounded soldiers, that look all have 
in their eyes, be they black or grey or blue or 
brown. "Why has this been done to me ? What 
in life, in death, in heaven, in hell, have I looked 
upon in yonder blood-steeped land?" 

And so they pass. Huge motors full, motors 
lined with white linen, and softened with down 
cushions; motors driven by liveried men with 
white hair, motors with coronets on the door 



SILHOUETTES OF WAR 177 

panels, motors with brown-faced women at the 
wheel. 

And these men? Returning soldiers — all 
wounded, all sick and weary and war sodden. 
Some have come to stay, disabled for all time. 
Others bide but a time and then go back. 

Have they any claim on us? Have they any 

claim of heart, of soul, of prayer? 
******* 

It was 8:45 of a winter morning, and the 
coach of the city bound District Railway train 
was crowded to capacity. A score of people got 
out at Sloane Square. They were regular com- 
muters. That cleared the gangway of strap- 
hangers and the girl sitting nearest the door 
had an uninterrupted view of the passengers. 

A sailor sat opposite to her. He had his 
worldly possessions in his regulation white spot- 
ted kerchief. Oblivious to every one, he read 
avidly from across the aisle the news in the 
offside of the girl's newspaper. She folded it 
up. People were more interesting than news. 
Besides the boy looked lonely. 

"Going back?" 



178 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

The sailor smiled : "Yes." 

"Well, won't you take a paper to read on the 
train?" 

The boy shyly put out his hand to receive the 
sheet, then smiled again, a softly pathetic light- 
ing of a face where loneliness had rested su- 
preme in the expression. 

Some one cared. 

A general sat beside the girl. She could see 
the glint of the crossed swords of his shoulder 
badge, and the gleam from the oak leaves which 
rimmed the peak of his service cap. He sighed 
once or twice, and scanned for a third time the 
casualty list of the day before. 

In the farther corner a family group occu- 
pied four seats. There was grandmother, there 
was unmarried auntie, there was mother and 
clinging to her hand a five-year-old boy. There 
was father, in one arm he held tight clasped a 
baby girl, with his free hand he steadied a rifle 
and bayonet which rested against the seat. The 
tiny hands of the baby explored his rugged, 
bronzed, hard-bitten face. His kit-bag lay, a 
heavy heap, at his feet. Strapped to his knap- 



SILHOUETTES OF WAR 179 

sack was a cardboard box which oozed some 
sweetness — home-made goodies. 

There was a tragic gaiety over the party. The 
mother furtively wiped eyes whose lids already 
reddened. The grandmother sighed audibly, 
stifled it to laugh at some sally of the aunt. The 
man responded with a touch of dull joviality. 

"We're there !" It was the grandmother who 
commenced to gather parcels, but it was a mis- 
take. We were only at St. James. The girl 
knew for where they were bound. It was all 
too obvious. Victoria — the tragic 9:15 — the 
train which carried short leave men back to 
France, back to the front, back to the hell of 
German make. 

"Victoria!" The girl conductor called the 
name cheerily. Cheer was the great antidote, 
a smile the only drug to still the achings of 
thousands of hearts. 

The father stumbled to his feet, he caught up 
his rifle and kit-bag; the mother held out her 
arms to the child, but the little one clung the 
closer. There was a jam at the door. The sol- 
dier caught sight of the general, stammered, 



180 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

stepped backward. It was impossible for him 
to salute. 

"After you — " it was the officer who spoke. 
He poked a tentative finger at the baby girl 
who paid no heed ; "Da-da — Da-da !" 

The party moved along the platform, through 
the subway, up the stone stairway into the main 
depot of Victoria. 

There was a seething mass of figures, and 
the girl lost sight of the party as they were 
swallowed in a struggle to reach number five 
platform. A train stood with engine panting. 
Already heads and bodies leaned half-way out 
from the windows. Already hand-wavings and 
final shouts of farewell carried to the barrier 
where friends stood — all women these friends. 

As the station clock clicked the quarter hour, 
the girl caught sight of the party again. The 
women were waving handkerchiefs wildly, 
their eyes streaming with tears, the tiny baby 
yelled piteously "Dad-da-da !" The mother 
clasped her convulsively without words. The 
grandmother spoke. 

"Da-da has gone in the big puff -puff !" The 
old woman was brave, she lead the little boy by 

* 



SILHOUETTES OF WAR 181 

the hand — his father, her last son, following 

where three had gone before. 

"When'll Daddy come back, gran'ma?" 

But there was no answer. The 9:15 train 

carried out a load of throbbing, pulsing, vital 

humanity — how many would come back? 
In God's mercy the answer lay hid. 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE SECOND LINE OF DEFENCE 
I 

WOMEN ! Yes, women are in our second 
line, have been our second line of de- 
fence since 1915. 

The Germans have pushed women and chil- 
dren before them when fighting in the early 
days of the war, knowing full well that our 
boys of Britain and France could not fire at 
such a target, and so the Hun advanced behind 
this dastardly fashioned cover. The German 
in later battles has chained women to his ma- 
chine guns and forced them to fire. 

Thank God, our troops though going through 
the horrors of hell do not become devils — they 
remain men. 

Our second line of defence is composed of 
women too, but our second line is in the ship- 
yards, the munition factories, the cloth mills, 
182 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENCE 183 

the aerodromes. It is in the every-day occupa- 
tions of street-car driving, of clerking, of truck 
driving, of railroad work, of freight yards and 
coal yards, of gardening, of farming, of road 
repairing. There is the every-day matter of 
plumbing, of carpentry and of electrical work. 
Women are doing any and all of these things. 

In the old country British women have made 
good. They have succeeded where it was sup- 
posed that they would never enter. In the old 
country the necessity, not for conscription but 
for organised woman labor has been recognised. 
If I had power to-day in the United States, I 
would establish huge training centres in every 
branch of industrial work for the women who 
may eventually have to do men's work. There 
may never be the same degree of need as in 
France and Britain, but there may. We did not 
expect nor anticipate so universal a demand 
upon us. It came and we were not entirely 
ready. We had to make an effort amounting 
to the superhuman. 

Women were dumped into men's work, when 
the demand came, without previous experience, 
without mental or physical preparation. Em- 



184 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

ployers had the attitude of "we must use them, 
but we know they are no good." 

Think of it — women starting on men's work 
absolutely ignorant of tools or machinery, not 
even able to handle implements of this trade or 
that except in most amateur fashion. Woman 
expected to turn out the same quantity and 
quality of work as previously done by a man 
with years of experience, twice her strength 
and possibly a long boy apprenticeship. 

Woman struggled, battled and fought. "No 
good," said the employer, who refused to think 
or to reason. "I can't have women fooling 
round here, wasting time, wasting money and 
wasting material." 

"You're not giving us a fair chance," the wo- 
man's answer came fast enough. "Are we 
to know by instinct how to run machinery, how 
to turn lathes and guide motor saws? Are we 
to step from a baking board to a machine bench 
and bring the same calloused hands to endure 
rough work as the men before us? Are we to 
leave the washtub, the typewriter, the sewing 
machine and handle a plumber's tools with an 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENCE 185 

inborn aptitude? Are we to throw down the 
embroidery frame and pick up the handles of 
a plow?" 

Woman failed in many of her enterprises at 
the start. She had the wrong idea, which is the 
idea of all women, of work. She cheerfully went 
out to an eight, nine, ten or twelve-hour day of 
men's labor ; with a little less cheer she returned 
to a lonely home and a meal prepared by her- 
self. Hot, tired, aching, her heart lonely for 
the man who was fighting for her, she sat down 
to her solitary meal, too wearied to eat. She 
with no cheer left, set about fixing her house- 
hold. Possibly marketing had to be done — a 
hard, worrisome marketing, where supplies are 
limited and prices high. 

It would not do. Too much has always been 
expected of women. We are so versatile, we are 
so eager and willing when the call has come, 
that we attempt too much, we attempt more 
than our bodies can endure, though our spirits 
are willing. 

No man, no ordinary man, ever did a hard 
day's work outside and then returned home to 



186 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

clean a house, cook meals and mend clothes. 
No sir — not he. One man — one job. One wo- 
man — a dozen jobs. 

Nor did man ever do all this on "women's 
wages" — why the distinction? We do double 
the work, need twice the energy and get nearly 
half as little to provide that energy. 

I am no ranter for a vote, for suffrage, for 
"rights," and so forth, but I am an advocate of 
fair play and at least a common-sense outlook 
on our situation. 

The employer began to see reason, albeit it 
was his own idea of reason. The average em- 
ployer, not yet attuned to the "hurt" of war 
giving, saw a way to increased output and in- 
creased profit. He would partly train these 
women. He would trust to their extra trait of 
conscientiousness, to their eagerness to help, to 
their loyalty to the soldiers — a loyalty which 
as I write has held woman to the lathe while 
so-called men strike — oh ! the pitiful cowardice 
of it ! What if soldiers struck ? 

The employer trusted woman's valorous 
heart, beating high in the cause of right; he 
trusted in woman's instinctive guardianship of 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENCE 187 

her offspring — she would endure all that her 
children might be safe. It was for that that 
we women fought, safe in more ways than from 
the barbarous hands of an infamous enemy 
though that were danger menacing enough in 
all surety. 

He would employ them on men's work and he 
would pay "woman's wages." Again, where 
does the distinction come in? Rather should 
our pay be higher by reason of the extra effort 
we infuse into all our work. There are a 
dozen things we must have, things vital to our 
comfort which man can do without. Appeal 
after appeal goes forth for women to save — 
save on women's wages? Let some man try 
to do it. 

No ; women's wages did not meet the case, nor 
yet partial training. Equal pay — equal work. 
There was the new slogan of women. Equal 
work as far as physical strength and endur- 
ance can carry it — it has carried British 
women pretty far — it has carried them to the 
firing line, it has carried French women there, 
Italian women, and no doubt can be but that 
American women will go as far. 



188 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

We got our training. We got our pay. We 
were giving our work, of the best — equal work. 

It was a Frenchwoman, noble, vital, strong 
in her cause, who scored the winning trick. 

Not men's pay for women's work, did she 
cry, no; on the posters with which she 
sprinkled Paris there read "Equal pay for equal 
WO rk — for men's sake!" That did the trick — 
that "worked the oracle." 

Trades unions which had whined to a gov- 
ernment of men's representatives, hugging their 
little, measly scrap of paper — "women only to 
be employed for the duration of the war" — 
Afraid of us? Good. Then equal pay to re- 
compense men's work done by women for men's 
sake. We were not afraid of them. 

There was no employer on earth so altru- 
istic, when the war should be over and he had 
a well trained, experienced corps of women 
workers, as to disband those for men who 
probably would work more slowly, and yet at 
wages half as high again. 

Men are quite human after all. I repeat we 
got our training, we got our pay. We are giv- 
ing of our work — the best — equal work for 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENCE 189 

men's sake. Incidentally it is to our own bene- 
fit, but of greater moment yet to our country 
and her cause. 

Take the large railway companies of Eng- 
land. Go visit their freight yards. Watch the 
dozens of young women handling goods with 
the ease of old timers. No apparent effort, no 
straining, no panting, no twisted backs nor 
wrenched muscles, except through personal 
carelessness or sheer accident. 

The secret? Go a step farther and back of 
the main freight yard you find another. Not a 
whit tidier, not a whit less crowded with goods. 
A few men standing about, a dozen girls in 
uniform handling heavy boxes, another dozen 
studying bills of lading, seeking into the mys- 
teries of f . o. b. and c. o. d. 

"Not that way, missie — handle your crow- 
bar — so! See? That eases the strain and 
heaves the box. Try again !" An instructor, too 
old for service and in a "starred" trade, teaches 
patiently, carefully his eager pupils. 

This is the freight yard school. Here the 
girls learn "how" before being drafted to the 
yards to "do." 



190 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

There were the public vehicle companies. 
The general motor omnibus people trained and 
tutored their women employees. They sent them 
out on experimental bus trips until gasoline be- 
came too scarce for anything but the strictest 
need. They showed the girl how to take fares, 
how to clip tickets, how to help awkward pas- 
sengers on and off, what to do in case of acci- 
dent and so forth. Of the girl conductors not 
one has been known to fail in facing an emer- 
gency, nor are emergencies infrequent on the 
war congested traffic streets of London. 

The majority of the bus women were chosen 
from among the widows, wives or sisters of 
previous men employees. They, as did the wo- 
men in nearly all other branches of labor where 
it was asked, promised that the moment a man 
was discharged disabled from the army yet suf- 
ficiently fit to resume his former occupation, 
they would give up their job. We women are 
no deliberate blacklegs. Already many such 
second transfers are made — the women, fit and 
experienced, are passing on to some work harder 
still, something too severe for a disabled man 
to do. 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENCE 191 

These women conductors had all the wit and 
repartee of their predecessors; yet their man- 
ner was courteous in the extreme, their care 
of a wounded man who boarded their bus more 
tender, more sympathetic than the care of the 
most highly qualified nurse. 

I remember being on a crowded bus one day 
when close by the upper window there was a 
very, not to say an extremely stout woman. 
She wanted to get out at one of the stops. Her 
passage down the bus was slow. The conduct- 
ress became impatient. She looked the stout 
party up and down — "Going to walk out, 
mother, or shall I tip the bus?" 

It was another bus woman who taught man- 
ners to a hyphenated Britisher. The semi-Hun 
was the only man in a bus crowded with wo- 
men, no seat was vacant. At Wellington Street, 
some more passengers boarded the vehicle, 
among them an Australian soldier in his hos- 
pital blues, and leaning on crutches, his left leg 
missing. The pre-war custom was for men in 
a crowded vehicle to offer seats to women. To- 
day the situation is somewhat reversed. Wom- 
en offer seats to wounded men. 



192 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

The Australian hopped carefully through the 
door. He stood. For a moment no one offered 
him a seat. There was the civilian man near 
him, but he did not move. Then several of us 
got up to make a place for the boy, but the girl 
conductor was wide awake. She had no room 
for slackers. The obvious Hun, naturalised 
though he must have been, sat on stolidly look- 
ing out the window. 

"Don't move, ladies," said she, "this is my 
job." Whereupon she approached the semi-Hun, 
tapped him on the shoulder, clasped the cord 
of the signal bell with the other hand. "This is 
your getting off place," said she. 

"It's not — I've paid my money for a seat — 
I sit." 

"Here's your money!" The girl dived into 
her coat pocket, produced her personal purse, 
handed him two pennies and jerked the signal 
cord. 

The man got off. The wounded Australian 
sat down and we women smiled our satisfaction. 
So do we demand courtesy and care for the men 
who have offered their all for our sakes. 

Brave little bus women in your blue uni- 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENCE 193 

forms, your white pipings, your wide brimmed 
felt hat with its leather strap hugging your 
rounded chin. It was you, I think, who awak- 
ened a greater chivalry in the hearts of Brit- 
ish men. It was for your sake that seats were 
fastened to the bus stairs, so that you might 
rest in snatched moments during your hard 
eight hours ; it was the sight of your trim little 
figure climbing and re-climbing those tiresome 
steps to collect fares which suggested to the 
minds of most civilian men and all soldiers and 
sailors, to hand their pennies over before they 
mounted up and so save you an added journey. 
It was you, tiny brown mite of a girl, who en- 
acted Eve and the apple to the driver's Adam. 
Outside the "Angel" at Islington it was. I had 
business at the Agricultural Hall. We stopped 
some minutes at the corner and I noticed my- 
self the fine display of rosy cheeked apples 
on a coster's barrow. You, it was — coy young 
worker — who swung down, purchased two of 
the brilliant fruit, handed one to your driver, 
and bit into the other with white, even teeth, 
then smiled alluringly and changed your apple 
for his ! As chance would have it, your bus took 



194 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

me back in a few hours' time, chance again put 
a coster's barrow outside the "Angel" — roses, 
deep red, shell pink, creamy yellow — it was 
not chance that made your driver climb down — 
I saw his War Service Badge as he limped by, 
a hero of Mons — purchase a brilliant rose and 
hand it to you, blushing no less brilliantly. 

A humble romance in the heat and murk of 
war, but still romance. 

The filling of positions by women where men 
only had worked formerly was so gradual, yet 
so persistent that we scarcely noticed the dif- 
ference. The smooth routine of affairs pre- 
vailed with truly very little interruption. Only 
to those who had been away a month or two 
were the changes noticeable. 

"What!" exclaimed an army officer as he 
sought his exclusive club in Piccadilly after six 
months in France — "What! women in these 
sacred rooms !" 

Sure enough there were women waitresses, 
women valets, girl bell-hops, where women had 
never been permitted before. 

I laughed the first time I ever saw women 
window cleaners, and I laughed at my first rail- 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENCE 195 

way porter, not because they were clumsy or 
awkward, no, far from it. The window cleaners 
worked in pairs — a smart uniform theirs, a 
Georgian coat and breeches, high boots, peaked 
cap all in shaded dusty blue — blue bucket, blue 
ladder and possibly blue cloths. They swung 
along the Strand with easy grace, carrying 
nothing! Following behind, came a sailor, in 
his hands the light, long ladder ; following him, 
a soldier (Anzac), in his hands the bucket, fol- 
lowing him, yet another soldier (Canadian) 
with the sponge balanced on two fingers. 

More romance — assuredly more romance. 

It was at Waterloo I saw the porter. I had 
gone to meet Rob Henderson coming on leave, 
a deputy for his sister. I saw him first. He 
struggled manfully with kit-bag, knapsack and 
half a dozen packages of obvious souvenirs. 
Coming tripping lightly beside him was the rail- 
way porter — over her arm his overcoat ! 

"I felt a bit shy at first," a porter told me, 
"but I soon got over it — I can take a tip now as 
casually as any man !" 

There are aspects of man's work which are 
simple in the extreme. 



196 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

The newspapers noticed the first woman em- 
ployed in a railway signal box, they remarked 
on the first railway train conductor, but I never 
saw mention made of the first girl who drove 
the first horse carriages of town salesmen from 
store to store and who helped drag in the boxes 
of samples ; I saw no mention of the girls who 
guided restaurant supply trucks, who lifted 
and hauled trays of bread and meats and pies 
to chain cafes, of elevator girls who ran the 
huge subway lifts, who drove delivery vans and 
a thousand other occupations one forgets men 
ever did. 

Shades of suffragettes — how we who worked 
had resented the huge, glaring notice on the 
Royal Exchange, "No women admitted." How 
we triumphed when the clerical staff perforce 
became all girls and the sign still remained up. 
There were women bankers, women in insurance 
offices, women dispensers, women in the coal 
yards, women who delivered the milk and wo- 
men who delivered the bread. There was no 
occupation could daunt us, our only thought to 
carry on. 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE SECOND LINE OF DEFENCE 
II 

TO BE a munitioneer was the acme of all 
hopes among women who wanted to be 
"in" the war. 

Of the five million odd women who are work- 
ing for Britain in these days, there are one mil- 
lion three hundred and two thousand in govern- 
ment employ ; of these seven hundred thousand 
when the last numbers were taken in 1917, were 
in munition plants including shipyards, but not 
including one thousand, four hundred and fifty 
trained mechanics in the Royal Flying Corps, 
nor women employed as veterinaries and at- 
tendants at the horse hospitals, nor the women 
in the Tommywaacs and Wrens (Women's Aux- 
iliary Army Corps and Women's Royal Naval 
Service). The majority of these women had 
not worked at outside work before. The flag 
197 



198 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

had made a mighty appeal; the women made a 
mighty response. 

The government of Great Britain besides its 
ninety National Arsenals has had to handle five 
thousand and forty-six controlled factories. It 
has had to find shifts of workers for day and 
night — three shifts in the twenty-four. It has 
had to rearrange much for the altered personnel 
of the staffs. It has had to see that skilled work- 
ers are evenly distributed. It has had to solve 
the housing problem, and to provide for the wel- 
fare of the workers, to look after their health 
and their recreations. 

At first there was naturally an outcry when 
women determined to enter munition work 
en masse. It was not women's natural work. 
Well, man will hardly contend that killing other 
men is his natural work. Yet, it is being done. 

Munition work was too heavy for women — 
that may be, yet no one ever argued that rising 
at six in the morning to wash the clothes of a 
family, to wring them, blue them, starch them, 
mangle them, iron them, mend them, in between 
while clean house, prepare meals and see to the 
children — incidentally bear the children — no 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENCE 199 

one ever said that was too hard work for a 
woman, and still it has been done, is being done 
— I suppose, unfortunately, must continue to be 
done by women. Why, take the ironing alone, 
a lady in Akron, Ohio, has told me that for a cer- 
tain purpose, tests were made — in ironing an 
ordinary wash, a woman in handling her usual 
sized irons lifted one ton during the process. 
Not all at once, no, but neither in the processes 
of munition work does she lift a ton all at once. 

Spring of 1915 saw women going more 
quickly each week into work that we had never 
thought to do. The summer of 1915 saw muni- 
tion plants springing into existence where green 
fields had lain fallow and sportive rabbits were 
the only living thing. At Gretna Green in Scot- 
land, a factory nine miles long with a working 
staff of twenty-eight thousand appeared as 
though by the wave of a magician's wand, and 
the majority of the workers there were women. 

Close by London, a town — brick villas, elec- 
tric light, hot and cold water system, bus and 
street-car transport, amusement centres — suffi- 
cient for the housing of two thousand souls, was 
complete in the space of a couple of months. 



200 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

These are only incidents of the immensity of 
Britain's task. We had to provide shells, and 
after all they are only a small part of munition 
work, shells for ourselves on the Western Front, 
shells for our Allies, shells for Salonika, for 
Egypt, for Mesopotamia, for South Africa, for 
West Africa, for East Africa, for the Cam- 
eroons, for possible incursions into India, for 
home defence. Small wonder there was no time 
in which to deny lies spread in neutral coun- 
tries about us, lies still used by the pro-German 
and the anti-English in Canada and in the 
States, lies which made the hardships of war 
all the harder to bear. 

Women, except in a few cases, have not taken 
on the more highly skilled jobs. It could not be 
expected, but in a vast number of things women 
have excelled men at their own game. This 
was willingly acknowledged by foremen in 
especial regard to work on delicate apparatus. 
Women had the advantage of supple fingers, a 
delicate and sensitive touch and smaller hands. 
In many cases the smallness of their hands and 
feet was a disadvantage, a disadvantage which 
has now been overcome by the introduction of 




Louise B. Peat 
Her sister-in-law. Nurse in Mesopotamia 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENCE 201 

women-size tools. A smaller lathe, a treadle 
with foot-piece shaped to a woman's foot, a 
shovel sufficiently light for her to handle. A 
dozen readjustments such as these are revolu- 
tionising the industrial world — and for good. 

The woman worker is not hidebound by the 
conventions of labor. She is willing to learn, 
but she brings a fresh view-point and her very 
lack of knowledge gives her a firmer grasp of 
the essential needs. She sees a job from a dif- 
ferent angle. I was connected with one large 
controlled factory in England. Here girls were 
literally drafted in by the thousand. They were 
shown their work and a stimulus given to the 
learning by an offer of prizes to those who could 
make adaptable suggestions for increasing the 
output. In the manufacture of a certain part of 
the article turned out, it was passed along re- 
volving drums. The articles were placed eigh- 
teen inches apart, the drum moved, and while 
the eighteen inches of empty space went by the 
worker stood idle with folded arms. A girl of 
eighteen was put on to this work. Mr. Casson, 
in charge of the readjustment, had fired her en- 
thusiasm for work by his talks. She determined 



202 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

to study her job and earn one of the prizes. She 
queried the foreman, the assistant efficiency per- 
son, the manager, the proprietor himself as to 
the reason for the empty eighteen inches on her 
drum. No one knew. It had always been so 
and presumably was all right. The girl filed her 
suggestion form— "Reduce the 18" by 16"— 
leave two inches between each article — reduce 
time waste and increase output." She won first 
prize. It was in the very early days of woman's 
wholesale advent into war work ; possibly there 
was a trifle of jealousy afoot, but the manager 
effectively took the glow from the rosy pleasure 
of her triumph by his speech on presenting the 
prize. 

"I thought," said he, "there were some things 
not necessary to the winning of this war — now I 
find that all things are necessary — even a 
woman's curiosity." 

Those days are gone. It is only the small 
minded, narrow-spirited man who is afraid of 
the woman worker. In many cases we do much 
better work than men, in many cases when on 
piece work we turn out much more. Only last 
spring the manager of the Carborundum Com- 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENCE 203 

pany at Niagara Falls told me that he had found 
girls better in every way. 

We take no undue credit for this. We have a 
reason. We are working now with a greater in- 
spiration than ever man had in the days gone 
by. We are not working for our employer, our 
pay envelope nor for ourselves. We are not 
working at all. We are fighting. We are the 
second line of defence. We are fighting with all 
the courageous, ferocious spirit of a tigress de- 
fending her young. Each woman is fighting for 
some man, as is each man fighting for some 
woman. Walk through any factory, watch a 
woman at lightning speed filling shells — ram- 
ming the awful "dressing" home — watch her 
unnoticed, mark her grim set lips, note the steel- 
iness of her eyes, and listen to the muttered 
words — "That — for the man who got my Bill." 

There you are. There's a reason for our 
greater skill, greater considering our experi- 
ence ; there's a reason for our larger output, our 
quicker work, our concentration, our never-fail- 
ing will to endure. 

Walk round any factory and through any 
shipyard — see the women hammering, rivetting, 



204 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

caulking, watch them pouring out leaden mis- 
siles, pulling bands of copper white hot from 
glowing furnaces, watch them drilling shell bod- 
ies for eighteen pounders, watch them tapping 
copper bands and rivets in the plugs of high ex- 
plosives. Go, if you have courage, to the danger 
zones, peep into the cubicles of twisted rope 
where one woman, masked, goggled, overalled, 
gloved, works silently, grimly alone — alone, so 
that if her materials explode one woman, one 
only, is blown to pieces, not fifty or one hundred. 

Walk down the aisle of a powder factory, hid- 
den deep as it may be in a sheltered cup of the 
Surrey Downs, friend Boche will seek it out — 
hear bomb explosions to right and left as the 
Hun circles round in his aircraft. Watch the 
women workers line up in their air formations, 
watch them march out, calm, cool, collected, but 
all the time unwilling, to enforce safety. Watch 
the corps of women "firemen" stand to the ready 
with hose outrun, and watermains unlocked. 

There is a reason, an inspiring reason for our 
greater effort. Shall we continue that effort 
after victory has come? We can not tell. We 
do not know how the reaction will affect us. 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENCE 205 

Take away our object, take away our inspira- 
tion, remove us from the second line, and it is 
hard to tell what the result may be. For now, 
in the moment of need we are what we are. 

Appearance? Yes; there were those who 
cried out at the sight of women in trousers — in 
overalls. I can talk of worse as to appearance. 
Come with me a moment and I will show you 
girls jaundiced, yellowed to a saffron shade — 
their good looks gone forever or for these many 
years, their faces a mask, their hands repulsive 
claws. What is it — why is it? 

Only lyddite workers, only girls who breath 
the fumes of picric acid, only "privates" in the 
second line of defence, only women who will tell 
you " 'E's gone to France, my Jim is" — or "My 

husband is Colonel in command of 

Company" — only girls who are risking their all 
cheerfully, who talk in a rough, husky voice 
for the picric acid fumes affect the mucous 
membranes of the throat, and have sometimes 
deadly effect on kidneys and nerve centers. 

These are the things English women, French 
women have been doing during four years "for 
him." 



206 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

And he — when he returns and finds his girl 
an ugly shadow of her once pretty self — will he 
desert her for some attractive nymph employed 
at less exacting toil? Not he. Tommy Atkins, 
whether he was one of the old "contemptibles," 
those game one hundred thousand almost anni- 
hilated, whether he was a Territorial lad 
pledged for home service and volunteering for 
front line action, or whether he was one of 
"Kitchener's Mob," Tommy admires pluck — so 
does brother Jack, above all things, pluck. They 
honor the girls they call "canaries." 

Little "canary" with the husky note and tar- 
nished plumage, fit mate for a fighting man. 
"Quits" is the cry when we size up the giving of 
both for Liberty. 

There is the forlorn little war widow. I have 
watched her still a bride, wave farewell to her 
husband — choke back her tears — tighten her 
white lips, then turn to answer the call that is 
bred in British hearts — the call of honest work. 
I have seen her a bride no longer, I have seen 
her sob out her heart while my own tears 
blinded my eyes, then I have heard her whisper 
"I must go on — some other boy will need an 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENCE 207 

extra shell to avenge my Jim — I must go on." 
And she goes on. Her motto noblesse oblige. 

Yes; in our hearts, we of the second line, 
there is some bitterness and there is vengeance. 
"Vengeance is mine," hath said the Lord of 
Hosts, yet may it not be that the Lord chooses 
instruments of vengeance for the wreaking of 
His just wrath? Surely the just anger of our 
outraged love shall not be held against us. 

There is the main reason for our work, our 
success. To-day everything, with time, has be- 
come easy to us; to-day, the fever of work is 
gripping us for work's sake, to-day, we are toil- 
ing for the sake of our own and our daughters' 
economic independence. We are toiling for the 
safety of our world. 

It is a wonderful feeling — it is our recogni- 
tion as workers in the hive, while still reserved 
to us is the queenship of our eternal woman- 
hood. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE AND AFTERWARD 

"TF THIS war only lasts another year, I'll be 

JL on my feet!" It was 1915 and it was Mrs. 
Joe Green who spoke. Now Mrs. Joe was a 
fond wife this fifteen years and a good mother, 
but a human woman. Financially in all of four- 
teen of those years she had been precariously 
standing on a crater edge of debt; oftentimes 
"Uncle," otherwise a pawnshop, had saved her 
from toppling over. Mrs. Green possessed a 
pair of brass candlesticks : "Me mother's before 
me and hers before that, let alone how long 
before that!" These with due regularity came 
and went "where the ivy clingeth," "up the 
spout" — still further renditions of the word 
pawned in Mrs. Green's phraseology. 

Joe was a day laborer before the war. Once 
for a mad month he had earned thirty shillings a 
week. That was in the first year of their mar- 
ried life. Then work failed or Joe got lazy 
208 



FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE 209 

again and the family income descended to its 
accustomed level of one pound per. 

Miriam came the first year, followed by Joe 
Junior, then the twins, Katy and James, Vincent 
followed and Harry Jack didn't delay long after. 
Mrs. Green never could "get ahead" of herself. 
Small wonder, poor woman. 

Feed and clothe yourself, feed, clothe and rear 
six healthy youngsters, feed, clothe and give 
pocket-money to a husky man with a prodig- 
ious appetite, which he could not help, on five 
dollars a week — it is a feat. Even in pre-war 
days, Mrs. Green barely did it, eked out by occa- 
sional days of "charing," and more occasional 
days of "washing." 

Joe, being neither a drinker nor a slacker, 
went to war. In 1915 his pay was roughly 
twenty-five cents per day — the true English- 
man, though no more than a day laborer fights 
for England, not cash ; he strikes for world Lib- 
erty, not wages. Joe's separation allowance 
was for his wife twelve shillings and sixpence 
per week, two and sixpence for the first child 
and probably one and sixpence for each other 
child. 



210 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

Joe was a good husband ; he allotted a gener- 
ous half of his munificent recompense to his 
Missus. She was overwhelmed. Never before 
in her life had she seen so much money "let 
alone handlm' it every week." 

Then the call for women workers came. Mrs. 
Green heard the call. She went into a munition 
plant — it happened to be near her home. She 
learned quickly and her weekly pay envelope 
sometimes held as much as one pound fifteen 
shillings. 

Perhaps there are those who will say she neg- 
lected her children. Was it neglect when Mrs. 
Green went charing and left them a full day 
alone to play on the street and filch a crust from 
the wall cupboard at dinner time? 

To-day, Mrs. Green goes to work and brings 
the baby with her. She puts him in the factory 
creche. There he is attended by volunteer 
nurses under the charge of a trained nurse. He 
is fed and kept clean, amused if he is old enough 
for amusement. If his mother nurses him, she 
comes at the stated hours and attends to his 
want. When the shift leaves work, she picks 
up her baby and goes home. Meanwhile the 



FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE 211 

other children have been to school, they have 
had their dinners at the school mess-room, they 
have played, under supervision, in the school 
yard. And Mrs. Green herself has had adequate 
food at the factory canteen at a nominal price — 
being a munition worker and requiring addi- 
tional energy, she is allowed something a little 
over the usual food allowance of the ordinary 
civilian. From the canteen, too, she can carry 
home a well cooked nourishing dinner for the 
family, or she can go to the community kitchen 
of her neighborhood and have a meal prepared 
there. Her housekeeping is reduced to prac- 
tically nothing. She attends to the small 
amount of it with a cheerful spirit, and no 
longer are the children irritatingly reactive to 
the mother's frayed nerves, outcome of her 
overworked, underfed body. 

Then there was Mrs. Nolan. Her Irish hus- 
band was a street-car conductor in Glasgow, 
with a weekly wage of twenty-seven shillings. 
Mrs. Nolan managed her two-roomed residence, 
fed, clothed and paid rent for herself, himself, 
and three small Nolans, all out of one pound 
seven. She had an elderly relative, too, who at 



212 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

times was glad of a meal. Nolan joined up. The 
car company paid his wife half his wage each 
week, the government paid her the twelve shill- 
ing and sixpence separation allowance for her- 
self and somewhere around seven shilling and 
sixpence a week for the children. Mrs. Nolan, 
like Mrs. Green, never had had so much money 
before. Remember there was one mouth less to 
feed and that a man's, neither had she to supply 
him with pocket money — rather, out of his shill- 
ing per day (this was before the increase in 
army pay) he allotted her a possible dollar a 
week. 

The car company fell short of labor. They 
advertised for women conductors and gave the 
preference to widows and wives of employees 
overseas. Mrs. Nolan became a conductor at 
twenty-seven shillings a week herself; her 
elderly relative delightfully gave up precarious 
charing and "minded" the children. 

Perhaps Mrs. Nolan lost her head, perhaps 
she should have been censured, perhaps she was 
giving way to a craving of refinement; a desire 
for better things denied her all these years. 
Mrs. Nolan handled her first week's independent 



FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE 213 

income. She went straightway and bought 
herself a black silk gown! Extravagance? 
Yes, maybe it was. Vanity? Possibly. But 
don't you see the sheer human feminine nature 
of the thing? 

The next week found the Nolans migrating 
to a roomy four-roomed apartment as against 
the two rooms of previous days. The follow- 
ing month saw the first instalment paid on a 
piano and the piano in the front room. Mrs. 
Nolan could not play, nor Nolan, nor yet the 
elderly relative, but "he" had always wanted a 
piano and Emma Jane, aged twelve, was already 
"taking" lessons. Imagine the surprised delight 
of Nolan on his first leave, imagine his renewed 
admiration for the "old woman" in her new 
black silk. Imagine his pleasure in the bank 
book which shows a record of War Saving Cer- 
tificates (Stamps) against the probable rainy 
day of his return incapacitated from the front, 
the small nest egg which will be the capital of 
the little business he will conduct when victory 
comes. Imagine his pleasure in the happier, 
healthier, better clothed children. Imagine the 
rejuvenation of love, frayed and tattered as it 



214 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

had been, in the weary, sogging fight for mere 
existence in pre-war days. 

And when victory and consequent peace does 
come, is Mrs. Nolan going back to the two 
rooms, is she going back to the apportioning of 
twenty-seven shillings per week? Is she going 
to discard her black silk frock and all it means 
to her in uplift of pride in herself? Is she go- 
ing to smother her children, herself and her 
husband in another two rooms ; is she going to 
turn out the elderly relative? 

Are any of the women who have worked — 
who have found economic independence — are 
any going to return to the old ways? 

I do not think so. 

There is a readjustment and a reconstruction 
here, vaster, if possible, than the readjustment 
of the fighting man to civilian life. Who is go- 
ing to organise it? 

"The trend is to destroy home life" — the ar- 
gument has been advanced to me these many 
times. In a certain section of society I can not 
see that it will. There has not been a great deal 
of home life in the poorer habitations at any 
time. We want some solution to bring the tired 



FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE 215 

women up from the slough of jagged nerves, un- 
dernourished tissues and stultified, even atro- 
phied brain power. 

The solution appears to me in a more definite 
organisation of the system under which the Mrs. 
Nolans and Mrs. Greens of war time, work. By 
the non-system of pre-war days, their work was 
never ending. No eight hours ever marked the 
labor limit of the housewife. No woman ever 
wanted or will want an eight hour limit on the 
charge of her offspring, but it is her right to 
have a limit set on the eternal grind of washing, 
sweeping, dusting, cooking and washing again. 
New Zealand, a country of women voters, has 
become as nearly idealistic in her working ar- 
rangements as can be expected on an earthly 
existence. 

American women with a Federal and State 
vote, British women with an Imperial and pro- 
vincial vote should do no less. 

There is the readjustment of the woman 
worker whom we have formerly designated as 
middle class. Some of these women are tasting 
financial independence for the first time, some 
are giving their energies to war work of vari- 



216 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

ous kinds — all have realised that housekeeping 
and child rearing can be so regulated as to allow 
of outside interest, interests which do not take 
away from the child, but add so to the mother's 
own development that she is a broader, deeper, 
more intelligent guide for the young mind than 
ever she could have been before. 

What of her? Is she going back to the seclu- 
sion of the house, or is she to continue to widen 
the confines of home by bringing the sorrow 
and gladnesses of humanity to the family circle? 

What of the girl whose outlook on life had 
been probable marriage ? In Britain — England, 
Ireland, Scotland and Wales — there are, 
roughly, ten women to every man. In Britain 
there are ten million dependent widows, mothers 
and children on the government pension list. 
Those are stupendous figures. The majority of 
these marriageable girls are doing men's work 
now; they are in munitions or actually in the 
women's army. 

What of their future? They must live. They 
must work — at what can they work when their 
war occupation is gone? These girls and war 
widows are too busy now to think of their 



FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE 217 

future. Some one should organise for them. I 
believe that it is to the women of America we 
must look for this solution. 

Over here not so many women are compelled 
to work at war labor as yet. The basis of 
needed organisation is at hand in the Women's 
Clubs. To the women of these societies I would 
appeal, I would ask the various Federations of 
Clubs to think out the future of these lonely 
women — submit schemes, arrange for discus- 
sion — help. 

In these days of horror, we women of the Al- 
lies have learned the sisterhood of sorrow; it is 
for us now to learn the brotherhood of work. 



CHAPTER XXIV 
DAUGHTERS OF COLUMBIA 

/HAVE seen America evolve. I have seen 
America in War. I have seen America de- 
velop from indifference to passive interest, 
from passive interest to interested action, from 
interested action to enthusiasm, from enthusi- 
asm to serious purpose. I will see America win. 

For almost one continuous year I have lived 
in the States. I have never yet seen in that year 
the American "of my youth." 

How well I remember him and her. Like the 
average English tourist, they were a thing 
apart, and they were of two species. 

There were those we encountered in the 
Strand. He, tall, thin, ascetic of face, clean 
shaven. Suit of darkish grey, the coat mounted 
on a "rack" of padding before going on the 
shoulders, a hard straw hat of narrow brim and 
monstrous crown, and stubbly boots. He rushed 
madly after nothing, half a length ahead of 
218 



DAUGHTERS OF COLUMBIA 219 

"her" — "hustling," we presumed. She wore 
black and white check with a white stock collar, 
exceedingly good as to cut, neat boots, a non- 
descript hat of the boat variety, depending 
therefrom a flowing white lace veil — there were 
no exceptions, while invariably she muttered 
on the inconvenience, the discomfort, the oldness 
of our landmarks. The small boy wore a suit 
from the bale of cloth affected by his mother, 
his knickers had a fearful and wonderful bag- 
giness pouching over pipe-sticks which were 
legs ; stubbly boots "like Pop's," short socks and 
a comic hat completed this same small boy who 
was always good-looking. His sister — some- 
times there, sometimes not, arrayed in white, 
with early Victorian white stockings and black 
boots — broke the silence of the energetic hustle 
to plead for iced water. Poor, little girlie, I'm 
sure she missed the ice-cream and the phos- 
phates, delicious as they are, of her own country. 
Then there was the second variety. They 
walked in groups and showed small inclination 
to hustle. They were all women and they con- 
gregated before brass tablets or stone inlets in 
the walls of historic buildings ; they haunted the 



220 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

Temple, Westminster (mostly Poet's Corner), 
and St. Paul's, even penetrated to the less well- 
known haunts of St. Olave's, St. Martin's or St. 
Barnabas'. They wore stiff white shirt-waists 
and were found round Bloomsbury at mealtimes 
and as darkness fell. They were school-teach- 
ers over on a special tour. 

That was all I knew of American people, with 
the exception of one or two very pleasant indi- 
vidual and passing acquaintances. Small won- 
der we knew nothing of our cousins across the 
pond; small wonder they knew nothing of us, 
for the English tourist (which includes Irish 
and Scotch) , to all seeming, has been many de- 
grees worse. Small wonder American boys now 
in England, welcomed with open arms, enter- 
tained to the best a limited rationed country can 
give, are waking to what is truly English, 
Welsh, Irish and Scotch, small wonder that we 
who travel from state to state, from San Fran- 
cisco to New York, from Niagara to Miami, in 
country town and in city, see with wide open 
eyes a vast and wonderful land, filled with a 
large and deep-hearted people. 

It was at the Noblesville, Indiana, Chau- 



DAUGHTERS OF COLUMBIA 221 

tauqua a year ago, that I first saw the true 
spirit of American women, a spirit which I can 
only describe by their own word: "lovely." I 
had spoken, truly I do not know how well or 
how ill, it was terribly warm and I was travel 
weary. I left the platform and was surrounded 
in a moment by kindly women, shaking hands. 
One old lady came toward me. She was crying, 
yet a proud smile shone through the tears. Her 
two boys had gone to camp that very morning. 

"You have given me such comfort — such 
courage." She grasped my hand, then turned 
away for a moment only to turn back again. 

"I wish I could give you something — I so 
want to give you something." I felt a little em- 
barrassed. I did not dare hope before that my 
words could have meant so much. 

Then the dear old lady exclaimed: "Oh, I 
have something to give you !" 

She dived into her workbag, fumbled about 
for a moment, then drew out a huge, golden 
brown doughnut. 

"Here — take this — God bless you and yours !" 

I took the doughnut. I felt the tears well into 
my eyes. She had given me of her best at hand, 



222 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

and she was a noted cook, I learned. Her sons 
— her nearest and dearest — had gone to fight for 
me as for her ; they had gone to offer their lives 
for the honor of their women-folk, as my own 
boy friends had gone long since. What little of 
comfort, of courage, of sympathy my words had 
brought her torn heart, was but a drop in the 
world sacrifice of womanhood. 

"Everybody thinks it strange I should want 
him to go — why, I wouldn't be a regular, sure- 
enough American if I didn't. Heaven knows it 
would mean an awful sacrifice to me, but this is 
no time to be a mollycoddle, I think." 

A quotation, this — a quotation from a letter 
of an American woman, one I am proud to call 
friend. He, who is to go, her husband — she, 
who is to be left, one woman, dainty in person, 
strong in heart — and they, who are also to be 
left, two babies — girl children, one toddler, one 
but little more. That is her sacrifice, to give up 
husband, father, protection — to be a "sure- 
enough" American. 

Just the words of one little woman, from 
among the thousands. Ah, little sure-enough 



DAUGHTERS OF COLUMBIA 223 

American, Heaven does know the measure of 
your sacrifice for God is with you and near you, 
blessing you, guarding you in this your mighty 
"bit!" 

I like the American woman in her civil life. I 
admire her tremendously in her organising 
powers. I like her self-sufficiency, her inde- 
pendence of action, and her dependence for en- 
joyment and happiness upon her own resources. 
I like her club life and her women's meetings, 
yet with the true American woman, home, as 
with us, comes first. 

The American woman in war is no less inde- 
pendent, no less resourceful. She has not had 
experience — the four years of bitter experience 
that we of France and Britain have had — but 
she is buckling the armor with the grim earnest- 
ness and the grim determination which mark 
her men-folk now in France. I have been in Red 
Cross centres, I have talked with canteen work- 
ers and automobile service women ; I have vis- 
ited factories where girls in overalls handled gas 
masks, loaded trucks or turned lathes with all 
the skill born of purposeful endeavor. True 



224 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

such service is not so universal as in the old 
country, but had the necessity arisen, should the 
necessity arise, American women will not be 
behind us in the forward race to uphold the 
lamp of Liberty. 
Daughters of Columbia — God bless you all ! 



CHAPTER XXV 

THE FUTURE OF THE NATIONS 

4(f\UT of the Nowhere into the Here"—- 
\J how little they know — these giant ones 
of earth. Do they not understand, can they not 
learn, do their eyes not see, can their hearts not 
fathom — 

/ am a Thought, pure as pearl — I am a Dream 
precious as gold — I am a Hope firm as rock 
crystal — I — a Baby — am Love materialised. 

To us of Britain and of France there is one 
lingering, agonising question; one fact of which 
there is no shirking. 

We know the flower of our young manhood is 
gone. 

We of Britain have as yet the largest army 
on the Western Front, and our troops have 
fought on seventeen other sections of the line 
in this world war. Of this eight million men, 
four million, five hundred and thirty thousand 
225 



226 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

are Englishmen, not Irish, nor Scotch, nor 
Welsh, nor Canadian, nor Anzac — English. One 
man out of every four males of the population 
has offered his life for a principle. I am not 
English, that is why I mention these stupendous 
figures of my sister country. I am Irish. 

Of the First British Expeditionary Force, 
men of the Regular Army, old country men 
alone — taking one division only, out of twelve 
thousand men, two thousand remain — out of 
four hundred officers there are fifty. We have 
had in one month of 1917 twenty-seven 
thousand men killed. 

These figures which I quote are official and 
they are not quoted as a boast of what we have 
done to save ourselves and save the world. If 
I wished to boast, there are figures greater, in- 
conceivable, of man power and money power 
thrown into the whirlpool of war by my own 
Empire. We do not boast. I quote these fig- 
ures so that my fellow women may pause and 
consider the future of the nations. 

America, thank God, can not lose so many of 
her young men. Germany now, though strong, 



THE FUTURE OF THE NATIONS 227 

is not in the first flush of her gigantic power. 
America will not fight with odds of five men to 
her one and no one to back her up. To-day in 
the four years of fighting gone by, we have 
built up a trench system, we have improved 
upon and remodelled it from the days men lay 
behind a sandbag breastwork and ate, slept, 
froze, died in a filthy ooze of mud and blood and 
ice. To-day, with the power of the States behind 
us, we have guns where before we had no guns, 
we have ships where before there were few 
ships. No ; I am thankful for the sake of Amer- 
ica's mothers and fathers, American boys will 
not be lost at the same remorseless rate. We 
are gaining in experience; there should not be 
so many costly mistakes — mistakes which are 
inevitable in the initial ordering of such a 
titanic undertaking. 

Nevertheless there is a question for every 
woman of us to-day. 

What of the children? 

Children are the mightiest asset of the na- 
tions. Conservation of food, conservation of 
cash — yes ; all necessary, all vital to victory, but 



228 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

it is the children who must be protected, cared 
for, guided and fitted for the more strenuous 
life which victory will necessitate. 

Women — in our hands and in ours alone lies 
the future of the world; in our keeping is the 
manhood of the nation. Aye, women, in the 
hollow of our hands we hold the lives of the 
unborn generations who will one day rule this 
country in the very principles for which our 
boys — your boys, your husbands, sons, brothers 
r— are giving their lives to-day — the principles of 
Right, of Liberty, of Love. 

A task, a wondrous task this of handling chil- 
dren. Watch the growth of the children and 
watch the growth of your country, it is one and 
the same thing. 

"Women are not fit to vote ; women are not fit 
to have a say in the affairs of the country," 
prehistoric man has said, yet he reckoned 
woman's place as mistress of his home; he 
counted her fit as wife, fit as mother of chil- 
dren, fit as guide to them in the most susceptible 
years of their life. The sun of prehistoric 
man's day has set. 

We in Britain — I, myself — have seen the tor- 



THE FUTURE OF THE NATIONS 229 

tured babies of France and Belgium. Little 
mites of humanity staring stonily from eyes 
glazed with fear, eyes like dull lanterns sunk in 
black sockets showing ghastly in white masks 
which should have been a baby face, rounded, 
rosy, full, smiling, pouting, gay with life and 
health. 

Not so. Kultur had torn the infant from the 
mother's breast; Kultur had murdered the child 
not yet able to run to shelter; Kultur had muti- 
lated, outraged, torn, starved. Tiny stumps 
ended the little sticks of arms, worse things 
yet were done which official records only 
can print. How often I have turned away my 
head for the very heartbreak of the sight as I 
passed the Refugee Clearing Station at the old 
Aldwych skating rink. I remember them the 
day before the air raid which burned the rink 
down, before the bomb fell which destroyed even 
the pitiful bundles they had rescued, the poor 
residue of homes. 

I have seen them, women with babies in arms, 
women dressed in old gowns we had gathered 
from generous homes, women dazed with sor- 
row, shocked into idiocy almost, by the horror 



230 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

they had glimpsed. Children hanging to their 
skirts, children too scared to cry, too pitifully 
weak to whimper. I have seen women shrink 
at sound of a sudden voice even though the tone 
was kind, I have heard a child scream at the 
honk of a passing motor. 

Tt was the sight of these refugees which 
made many of our women think of our own 
children. The Children's Aid Commission 
was formed, the one-time suffragettes organised 
milk depots and so forth, added efforts were 
made to stimulate interest in various child char- 
ities already in existence. The new interest in 
war tended to the forgetting of these long es- 
tablished reliefs. Investigations were made, 
statistics taken, figures verified. More babies 
were dying of what I may call our neglect each 
year in our large cities than ever the Hun in all 
his wrath had killed from his assaults by air. 
We women were killing them through indiffer- 
ence — lack of fresh air, overcrowding, under- 
nourished mothers, uneducated mothers, wrong 
feeding, lack of milk, lack of ice in summer, 
lack of coal in winter. We were responsible. 

Children over here die also of neglect. It is 



THE FUTURE OF THE NATIONS 231 

not in one land alone. I know. I have seen 
figures and heard facts. Is this to continue? 
Are we going to sit by and let countless 
mothers go through countless months of wait- 
ing, through countless hours of anguish — 
for what — a moment of joy, a tiny white coffin, 
a little mound of clay? 

I have had it argued to me that Britain was 
flooded with "War Babies." The percentage of 
illegitimate children in Britain has always been 
small. Since 1914 the birth of illegitimate chil- 
dren has decreased by some four per cent. Eng- 
land is not the home of decadent rascality. It 
has been said in my hearing by a supposedly 
intelligent woman, that every man returning 
from overseas would be a social menace. I can 
not understand such a deliberate insult to the 
fine mothers of a fine race. I only hope it was 
the thoughtless repetition of some subtle Ger- 
man propaganda. Soldiers can get into mis- 
chief more easily round their own home towns 
than in France or England to-day. 

The women, the thinking women, are too 
aware of the future of the old country to 
slacken for a moment the watchfulness they 



232 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

have established. War babies — we don't want 
war babies, poor mites, in the usual sense in 
which the term is used, but we do want our na- 
tion rebuilt. We can not have recourse to the 
disgraceful methods of Hunnism to make good 
the ravages of war — but, in the old country, in 
this country, we call on every married woman 
to do her duty. Are we to remain idle, self- 
indulgent — are we to be slackers and watch our 
country creep toward a precipice of eternal ex- 
tinction? The sole charge is with us; on our 
head lies the obligation and the honor. We are 
responsible to the country of our birth, of our 
adoption, we are responsible to the fathers who 
have offered their lives for our safety, to the 
fathers who are bringing us peace. We are 
responsible to the memory of our ancestors, we 
are responsible to God Almighty for the earthly 
keeping of the eternal souls entrusted to our 
care. 

Children are the pivot of the world's axis. 
They are the living, breathing essence of love — 
love of man and woman, love of woman and 
man. The very foundation of the country must 
rock if the children are not conserved. 



THE FUTURE OF THE NATIONS 233 

And we women, we who bear the days of 
waiting, the mental anguish, the physical tor- 
ture of bringing souls to earth, it is to us that 
the world looks for the training of the child. 
Our responsibility only begins when torture 
ends. 

The little creatures of to-day are a charge as 
never before. They have a heritage of sorrow. 
Oh, sister women, you who have suffered by 
war, you who know, give the children of the 
happiest and best. Let us but put away our 
own anxieties and dreads, worries and troubles 
for the sake of the young lives around us. 

To-day there is abroad the military spirit — 
the spirit of fight and might. How can we 
guide the young mind to know that the unrea- 
soning use of force is wrong, when all around 
are evidences that the proper use of force is 
right? How is the child mind to grasp the 
meaning — the significance of such an anomaly. 

Women, the task is in our hands. Let the men 
help — ah, yes, let them help all they can, but 
when father is fighting is not the eternal ques- 
tion, "Mother— why?" 

Women, there must be no more war. 



234 MRS. PRIVATE PEAT 

Are you going to have your daughter go 
through the agony of dread and sorrow and 
anguished yearning you have borne? Are you 
going to have your son mutilated ; are you go- 
ing to have your daughter's son thrown, a torn 
mass of bleeding tissue — awful, quivering fod- 
der for relentless cannon — are you? 

Men will fight for the victory which will 
bring peace on earth. We women must concen- 
trate, must work, must pray, that peace re- 
mains. How can we give account to the children 
if we do not prevail? 

All through the ages there comes to women 
the echo of that cry — Mother, why? Mother, 
why? The whimper of the babe in the cradle, 
the cooing voice of the toddler, the maturer 
tones of the teen age boy and girl — Mother, why 
— Mother, why? 

Women's war work has been strenuous, hard, 
self-sacrificing, yet women's war work is only 
commencing. Realise, my sister women, realise 
your obligation before it is too late. The na- 
tion depends on us. Ours is the sublime task 
— ours the embodiment of recreation, ours to 
guard the lives of tiny mortals less fitly born 



THE FUTURE OF THE NATIONS 235 

than others. Ours to wield the sceptre of su- 
preme command, ours to wear the crown of 
pain, the diadem of joy, ours to throw protec- 
ing arms around the quivering, tortured nation 
which is the birthright of our people; ours to 
rise by the gleaming footstool of sacrifice and 
service to the golden throne of all love and hap- 
piness — the throne of Motherhood. 



CHAPTER XXVI 
PRIVATE HAROLD R. PEAT 



I married him. 



236 




Her husband 



A PAGE OF HINTS 

Don't worry. 

Smile. 

Work. 

Play sometimes. 

Write often. 

Never wear black. 

Visualise your boy as well, strong, happy. 

If he be wounded, see him recovering ; see him 
cared for ; see him surrounded with kindness — 
for all this is so. If he "goes West," see him as 
a Soul released in Glory — for this is certain. 

Think positively — negatively never. 

Cooperate with your fellow woman, with 
your country. 

Concentrate on the end which is Victory. 

Find courage in the courage of your boy. 

Conserve in all things. 

Pray often. 

Pray fervently. 

Pray with abiding Faith. 

The Power which is within you wills it thus. 



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